Hostinger International

Hostinger started in November 2004 in Kaunas, Lithuania, bootstrapped by a group of young entrepreneurs as a company called Hosting Media. It now serves over 4 million clients worldwide and manages more than 7 million registered domains.

Scale came from accessibility. The launch of 000webhost.com in 2007 gave the company a world leader in free web hosting, and the freemium model attracted millions of users who later moved onto paid services.

The technology stack was built in-house. In 2011, the same year the company rebranded from Hosting Media, it launched hPanel, a custom control panel, instead of running on the industry-standard cPanel. That gave it full control of the user experience and room to iterate faster as it scaled globally.

Hostinger operates as an ICANN-accredited domain registrar offering 300 domain extensions alongside its hosting services. Registration includes instant activation, full DNS management, and complimentary privacy protection for eligible domains. An AI Website Builder generates sites from a short description, writing content and selecting stock images and brand-appropriate color palettes.

The products are integrated rather than sold separately: domain registration, hosting, AI-assisted site building, and management through the hPanel interface. Domain services include WHOIS lookup tools and domain transfer processes for consolidating a web presence with one provider.

The growth figures are steep. Headcount went from 400 employees in 2019 to over 1,000 by 2021, and the client count from 3 million in 2024 to over 4 million in 2025. Market share in domain registrations stands at 2.54%.