{
"id": "siteground-vs-hostinger",
"ids": [
"siteground",
"hostinger"
],
"title": "SiteGround vs Hostinger: UK costs, email and backups",
"kicker": "WEB HOSTING / THE FULL BUYING BRIEF",
"heading": "SiteGround vs Hostinger:
UK costs, email and backups.",
"deck": "Compare the prepaid bill, renewal terms, mailbox cover and WordPress workflow before choosing a hosting package.",
"description": "SiteGround vs Hostinger UK: compare prepaid costs, renewal rates, email, backups and WordPress staging, with a practical quote and recovery checklist.",
"answerHeading": "Choose the operating plan.
Then compare the commitment.",
"answer": "Shortlist SiteGround GrowBig when included email, daily backups and WordPress staging match your operating brief. Hostinger Premium can fit a small multi-site requirement when weekly backups are sufficient; daily backup and staging requirements change the package or add-ons to price. The checked introductory offers use different prepaid terms. Compare the actual payment and ongoing email needs, rather than choosing a winner from two monthly equivalents.",
"researchTag": "SiteGround / Hostinger UK hosting",
"researchLimit": "Dated public plan terms and proposed acceptance briefs. No speed, uptime, support-response or migration benchmark was performed. Prices are advertised offers, not an account-specific checkout or negotiated quote.",
"checkedAt": "2026-10-17",
"publishedAt": "2026-10-17",
"type": "hosting-plan-fit",
"datasetDescription": "Four UK hosting base-fee calculations, four hypothetical business briefs, plan boundaries and a blank quote/recovery worksheet. Different terms and features are preserved; no equal-capability or performance claim.",
"rows": [
[
"Website allowance",
"StartUp: one site; GrowBig: multiple sites within resources",
"Premium: three sites; Unlimited still has finite resources"
],
[
"Business email",
"Email accounts included in the checked web hosting bundle",
"Premium advertises two mailboxes per site for the first year"
],
[
"Backup schedule",
"Daily backups in the checked shared-hosting offer",
"Premium: weekly; daily cover is included with Business/Unlimited or eligible upgrades"
],
[
"WordPress staging",
"GrowBig and GoGeek include staging",
"Help identifies Business/Unlimited and higher; match the purchased plan"
],
[
"Displayed introductory term",
"Selected UK cards: twelve months prepaid",
"Selected UK cards: forty-eight months prepaid"
],
[
"Renewal comparison",
"Retain the renewal rate and the next invoice period",
"Retain the renewal rate, invoice period and email renewal"
],
[
"An unlimited site label",
"GrowBig still lists a shared storage allowance",
"Unlimited still has storage, database and inode boundaries"
]
],
"pricingExamples": [
{
"provider": "SiteGround",
"plan": "StartUp",
"currency": "GBP",
"monthlyEquivalentPence": 199,
"prepaidMonths": 12,
"initialBasePence": 2388,
"renewalMonthlyEquivalentPence": 1399
},
{
"provider": "SiteGround",
"plan": "GrowBig",
"currency": "GBP",
"monthlyEquivalentPence": 399,
"prepaidMonths": 12,
"initialBasePence": 4788,
"renewalMonthlyEquivalentPence": 2399
},
{
"provider": "Hostinger",
"plan": "Premium",
"currency": "GBP",
"monthlyEquivalentPence": 299,
"prepaidMonths": 48,
"initialBasePence": 14352,
"renewalMonthlyEquivalentPence": 1099
},
{
"provider": "Hostinger",
"plan": "Unlimited",
"currency": "GBP",
"monthlyEquivalentPence": 399,
"prepaidMonths": 48,
"initialBasePence": 19152,
"renewalMonthlyEquivalentPence": 1399
}
],
"exampleTable": {
"caption": "Four advertised UK offer bases checked 17 October 2026; different terms and packages, excluding VAT and extras",
"headers": [
"Package",
"Introductory monthly equivalent",
"Prepaid months",
"Calculated initial hosting base",
"Advertised renewal monthly equivalent"
],
"rows": [
[
"SiteGround StartUp",
"£1.99",
"12",
"£23.88",
"£13.99"
],
[
"SiteGround GrowBig",
"£3.99",
"12",
"£47.88",
"£23.99"
],
[
"Hostinger Premium",
"£2.99",
"48",
"£143.52",
"£10.99"
],
[
"Hostinger Unlimited",
"£3.99",
"48",
"£191.52",
"£13.99"
]
]
},
"scenarios": [
{
"name": "Two brochure sites and four mailboxes",
"question": "Can the same package cover both sites and the people replying to enquiries?",
"left": "Price GrowBig and retain the mailbox storage and sending limits. StartUp does not cover two sites.",
"right": "Premium has the reviewed site allowance; allocate the four mailboxes across the two domains and price their ongoing service.",
"note": "Two mailboxes per website does not establish four mailboxes on one domain. Keep domain ownership and each mailbox with its actual site."
},
{
"name": "A brochure site updated every working day",
"question": "How much work would be missing after a restore?",
"left": "Identify the latest daily restore point and who can recover files and the database.",
"right": "Compare Premium plus an eligible daily-backup purchase with the suitable higher package.",
"note": "Backup frequency alone does not prove recovery time or zero lost changes. Record a chosen restore point and reconcile what happened after it."
},
{
"name": "A WordPress site with regular plugin changes",
"question": "Can a nominated maintainer stage, review and release a change?",
"left": "GrowBig is the checked staging starting point; confirm the actual site and workflow.",
"right": "Confirm the staging entitlement for the purchased Business/Unlimited or higher plan and WordPress installation.",
"note": "Use a non-production copy for a rehearsal. Staging, backup creation and a production release are separate operations."
},
{
"name": "A store continues taking orders during a release",
"question": "Which new records must survive the cutover?",
"left": "Agree the order freeze, reconciliation and restore scope before approving a production change.",
"right": "Review what publishing the staging copy replaces, then protect live orders and customer changes.",
"note": "Neither an included backup nor a staging button proves a safe store release. Have an authorised operator retain the rollback and order handover."
}
],
"sections": [
{
"id": "prepaid-costs",
"title": "A monthly equivalent is not the payment due today",
"navLabel": "UK costs",
"paragraphs": [
"The table uses the advertised introductory monthly equivalent multiplied by the displayed prepaid months. For example, 399 pence multiplied by twelve is 4,788 pence, while the same 399 pence multiplied by forty-eight is 19,152 pence. The arithmetic explains the commitment; it does not establish that the two packages do the same job.",
"At the offers checked, the GrowBig base pays for a year and the Hostinger Unlimited base pays for four years. Dividing a long prepaid bill into a small monthly figure does not turn it into a rolling monthly purchase. Keep the selected term, total due and renewal date together in the quote worksheet.",
"The figures exclude VAT and extras. The renewal column is the advertised monthly equivalent, not a verified next invoice. Confirm the renewal duration, actual payable amount, tax treatment and any applicable offer conditions before ordering. A fair budget also records mailbox and domain renewals during the hosting term."
],
"links": [
{
"url": "https://www.siteground.co.uk/web-hosting.htm",
"label": "SiteGround UK plan terms"
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/uk/web-hosting",
"label": "Hostinger UK plan terms"
}
]
},
{
"id": "email-and-capacity",
"title": "Allocate mailboxes to domains, then check resource limits",
"navLabel": "Email & limits",
"paragraphs": [
"Write one row per domain with its website, mailbox names, required storage, mail provider and renewal date. An entitlement attached to each website cannot automatically be pooled onto another domain. If mail is staying with a separate service, retain its DNS and ownership requirements as part of the move.",
"The current Hostinger resource guide explains the transition from Web Business to Unlimited on most pages; existing Business customers retain their plan limits. It also lists finite disk, inode and database allowances. An inode is a file-system entry, so a large collection of small files can matter even when the storage total looks comfortable.",
"Treat the offer and resource table as a starting point for the actual account. For a two-site business, add the media, database and file counts together before accepting a shared allowance. Keep the supported application and the website editor in separate fields: a hosting bundle and a particular builder are different parts of the decision."
],
"links": [
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/6976044-parameters-and-limits-of-hosting-plans-in-hostinger/",
"label": "Hostinger account and resource boundaries"
}
]
},
{
"id": "backup-recovery",
"title": "Reconcile a restore against the records created afterwards",
"navLabel": "Recovery",
"paragraphs": [
"Hostinger’s daily-backup guidance describes seven recent daily restore points for eligible web hosting. Premium can add daily backup cover; Business/Unlimited and higher web packages include it. The provider’s separate VPS backup rules should not be imported into a web-hosting comparison.",
"Consider an original, fictional recovery brief: a database snapshot is taken on Monday at 00:00. One enquiry was recorded on Sunday at 22:00; two more arrive on Monday at 09:00 and 14:00. Restoring only that snapshot at 18:00 retains the first record and omits the two later records. This is a model of snapshot timing, not an observed result from either provider.",
"The downloadable recovery ledger marks that one retained and two missing records explicitly. Have the operator identify how later records would be recovered or reconciled, and record the actual test outcome in the blank field. Copies in a separate mail service can be useful evidence, but their existence and completeness must be checked; a website backup does not establish a mailbox backup.",
"Define the acceptable lost-work window and restore deadline before choosing a tier. Rehearse files and database recovery on an authorised non-production copy, then inspect the contact form, login, key pages and any external handoff. Leave the result unknown until the rehearsal has been completed."
],
"links": [
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/1665153-how-to-activate-daily-backups-in-hostinger/",
"label": "Hostinger daily web-backup scope"
}
]
},
{
"id": "wordpress-staging",
"title": "Staging must fit the account and the live database",
"navLabel": "Staging",
"paragraphs": [
"SiteGround’s plan-selection guidance places WordPress staging in GrowBig. Hostinger’s WordPress Overview documentation identifies staging on Business/Unlimited and higher plans, while its staging instructions still use the Business-or-higher wording. Match the current purchase to the account entitlement instead of assuming every advertised hosting plan includes that tool.",
"Hostinger documents that publishing its staging copy replaces live files and the database; later live changes can be lost. Its instructions also distinguish root-domain staging from a manually prepared subdomain setup and describe a DNS requirement when nameservers are external. Have the responsible operator include that dependency in the proposed rehearsal.",
"For a store, copying a tested theme is a different operation from replacing a changing order database. Agree what is being deployed, when ordering is paused if necessary, which records changed since the copy, and how rollback will preserve them. This comparison has not created a staging site, changed DNS or released a production database."
],
"links": [
{
"url": "https://www.siteground.com/kb/choose-suitable-hosting-plan/",
"label": "SiteGround staging plan guidance"
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/5609910-how-to-use-the-wordpress-overview-in-hostinger-dashboard-at-hostinger/",
"label": "Hostinger WordPress feature scope"
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/5720286-how-to-create-a-wordpress-staging-environment-in-hostinger/",
"label": "Hostinger staging and publication behavior"
}
]
},
{
"id": "same-site-trial",
"title": "Use the same acceptance brief before making a choice",
"navLabel": "Your checks",
"paragraphs": [
"Choose one representative page, a synthetic form enquiry and an authorised maintainer. In the proposed test, inspect the page on a phone, submit the synthetic enquiry only to an inbox you control, and reconcile the saved record with the notification. Record which plan and service handled each step.",
"Then rehearse a small change and its recovery on a non-production copy. Record the restore point, missing records, elapsed time and any work that remained manual. Ask each provider to quote the same requirements and retain any capability that is still unverified as an open item. No speed, uptime or support-response winner is established here."
]
}
],
"faqs": [
{
"question": "Is SiteGround or Hostinger cheaper in the UK?",
"answer": "Compare an eligible package and its complete prepaid bill. The four offers shown have different terms and capabilities; a smaller monthly equivalent is not a like-for-like cost result. Add tax, required extras and renewals to your actual quote."
},
{
"question": "Why can Hostinger have a lower monthly figure but a larger upfront bill?",
"answer": "The checked offers divide a forty-eight-month prepaid amount into a monthly equivalent. The selected SiteGround cards use twelve prepaid months. Record the full payment and service period rather than treating those figures as monthly billing."
},
{
"question": "Can SiteGround StartUp host two websites?",
"answer": "The reviewed StartUp package has one website. For a two-site brief, move the SiteGround comparison to a suitable multi-site package and check its resource allowance."
},
{
"question": "Does Hostinger Premium include daily backups?",
"answer": "Its reviewed base schedule is weekly. The daily-backup help explains an eligible paid addition for Premium and included daily cover on Business/Unlimited or higher web plans."
},
{
"question": "Do both providers include WordPress staging on every plan?",
"answer": "No. The SiteGround guidance starts staging at GrowBig. Hostinger’s help identifies Business/Unlimited and higher; verify the entitlement for the plan actually purchased."
},
{
"question": "Does a daily website backup protect new orders or all email?",
"answer": "A restore point preserves the captured state, not records created afterwards. Agree how later orders are reconciled and verify email recovery separately. A daily schedule alone is not a zero-data-loss or mailbox-backup guarantee."
}
],
"sources": [
{
"url": "https://www.siteground.co.uk/web-hosting.htm",
"facts": "UK StartUp and GrowBig promotional and renewal monthly equivalents, twelve-month prepayment, VAT exclusion, site allowances and included email/backups."
},
{
"url": "https://www.siteground.com/kb/choose-suitable-hosting-plan/",
"facts": "GrowBig WordPress staging and on-demand backup boundary; do not use the older traffic heuristic as a benchmark."
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/uk/web-hosting",
"facts": "UK Premium and Unlimited offer monthly equivalents, forty-eight-month total amounts, renewal equivalents and introductory mailbox terms."
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/6976044-parameters-and-limits-of-hosting-plans-in-hostinger/",
"facts": "Current web plan site/resource limits, Business-to-Unlimited naming transition and retained existing-account limits."
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/1665153-how-to-activate-daily-backups-in-hostinger/",
"facts": "Daily-backup purchase/entitlement and seven-day daily retention for web hosting, separate from VPS rules."
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/5609910-how-to-use-the-wordpress-overview-in-hostinger-dashboard-at-hostinger/",
"facts": "Business/Unlimited and higher WordPress staging feature boundary."
},
{
"url": "https://www.hostinger.com/support/5720286-how-to-create-a-wordpress-staging-environment-in-hostinger/",
"facts": "Staging eligibility wording, external DNS dependency and replacement of live files/database when publishing."
}
],
"relatedLinks": [
{
"path": "/categories/web-hosting/",
"title": "Compare web hosting providers →"
},
{
"path": "/guides/cms-migration-checklist/",
"title": "Plan website and URL continuity →"
}
],
"downloads": [
{
"path": "/downloads/siteground-hostinger-quote-checklist.csv",
"title": "Download the blank hosting quote checklist ↓",
"description": "Record each package, the actual invoice period, mailbox renewals, staging and recovery scope. Price and observed-result fields remain blank."
},
{
"path": "/downloads/hosting-snapshot-recovery-example.csv",
"title": "Download the fictional snapshot recovery ledger ↓",
"description": "One captured record and two later records omitted by a snapshot-only restore. Provider, real account and actual result are not supplied."
}
]
}