Hostinger vs OVH vs Infomaniak: which web host suits a small business?

Hostinger vs OVH is a comparison many small businesses make when they need web hosting: both advertise low monthly prices, and both sell domains, email and hosting from one account. I have added Infomaniak, the Swiss host, because of the three it is the one I recommend to owners who look after their own site.

My view does not come from a review site. I have worked in OVH and Hostinger accounts because my clients were already there, and I discovered Infomaniak the same way. Out of habit, I mostly use Spaceship myself.

A web host rents you the server space where your website’s files live. Your domain name and your email can sit with other companies, and my guide to domain vs hosting vs email explains how the three connect. Below, the three hosts are compared on what matters to a small business in the UK: ease of use, the price after the first term, support, where your data lives and what email you get. Prices are those shown at the time of writing (October 2026).

Hostinger vs OVH vs Infomaniak at a glance

My short verdict: if you will edit the site yourself without technical help, choose Infomaniak. If you are comfortable with hosting settings and want the lowest monthly price, Hostinger does the job, as long as you budget for the renewal. OVHcloud is for people who want control and know what to do with it.

First-year price vs renewal: what you really pay

Most hosts show two prices: the offer that gets you to sign up, and the price you pay when the first term ends. The second one decides what the site costs you over the years, so it is the one to compare.

Hostinger: cheap if you prepay four years

Hostinger’s Premium plan costs £2.99 (about $4) a month excluding VAT, on a 48-month term paid upfront. When that term ends, Premium renews at £10.99 (about $15) a month, more than three times as much. The plan above it follows the same pattern: £3.99 (about $5) a month for 48 months, then £13.99 (about $19). VAT is added at checkout, and the current figures are on Hostinger’s UK pricing page.

This jump is what I hold against Hostinger: the advertised price is real, but it is four years paid upfront, not the monthly cost of a website. Premium also includes a domain for the first year only, after which the domain renews at Hostinger’s own rate; my article on Hostinger renewal prices and moving your domain out covers that side.

OVHcloud: new ranges and higher prices since May 2026

OVHcloud changed its web hosting on 1 May 2026. The plans are now grouped into three ranges (Eco, Business and one for agencies), with new resources, support access and prices, and existing customers saw their bills rise too. New subscribers get a reduced price for the first period, then pay noticeably more. On OVHcloud’s UK pages at the time of writing, the entry-level Starter plan (one site) costs £1.39 (about $1.85) a month excluding VAT at first, then renews at £2.29 (about $3); the Personal plan renews at £5.19 (about $7). Check the current figures on OVHcloud’s UK web hosting page before you order.

Infomaniak: read the official price list

Infomaniak shows its prices in Swiss francs or euros, and review sites disagree on what its web hosting costs today, so I am not quoting a figure. It will rarely be the cheapest offer in year one. Open the official price page, pick your currency and read the renewal price as carefully as you would anywhere else; my Infomaniak review goes through its plans and its other services.

Ease of use: which panel can a non-technical owner handle?

This is where my opinion is firmest. I do not recommend OVH or Hostinger to small business owners who run their own site: both are a bit complicated to handle when hosting is not your job. They are not bad hosts. They are built for people who are at ease with hosting settings.

• OVHcloud’s Control Panel puts domains, DNS zones, hosting, email and servers under one roof, with the website products grouped in the Web Cloud section. That breadth helps a developer and confuses everyone else. It also has traps: in its DNS zone editor, a CNAME target typed without a final dot gets your own domain added to the end. That dot is the only real problem I have had connecting OVH domains to Squarespace, and my tutorial on connecting an OVH domain to Squarespace shows where it goes.
• hPanel, Hostinger’s own panel, installs WordPress for you. But installing WordPress is the easy part: the updates, the plugins, the backups and the renewal dates are then yours to watch. That is why my Squarespace vs WordPress comparison sends owners who edit their site alone towards Squarespace.
• Infomaniak’s Manager brings the domain, the hosting, the email and the company’s other tools into one dashboard. Of the three, it is the one I recommend to small business owners.

Where your data lives, and what email you get

Data location

• Hostinger lets you choose the data centre region for your site: pick the one closest to your customers.
• OVHcloud is a French company that builds and runs its own data centres.
• Infomaniak runs its own data centres in Switzerland. Its Geneva data centre, in service since 2024, sends its heat into the city’s district heating network.

Location matters less than backups. On 10 March 2021, a fire destroyed one of OVHcloud’s data centres in Strasbourg, and some customers who had no copy elsewhere lost their data for good. It could happen at any host, so keep your own copy of the files and the database, outside the hosting account. The same goes for the rest of your business data: the 3-2-1 backup rule covers laptops, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 too.

Email

Your email does not have to live with your web host, and keeping it apart has an advantage: if you change host, your mailboxes are not part of the move. If you prefer everything in one place:

• Hostinger lists mailboxes among each plan’s features: check how many you get, and whether they stay free after the first term.
• OVHcloud includes email accounts on your domain with its web hosting plans.
• Infomaniak sells email on its own (Service Mail) or within kSuite, its suite that adds kDrive cloud storage to your mailboxes.

I used to run email on Microsoft and found it a pain, which has not been the case with Namecheap’s and Spaceship’s email. Whichever provider holds your mailboxes, the domain’s MX records decide where the messages arrive. If that provider is Google or Microsoft, my guide to US tools under GDPR covers the data transfer rules.

Hostinger: who it suits, and who it does not

Hostinger suits a hands-on owner on a tight budget who is happy to pay four years upfront. You get a low monthly rate, WordPress installed in a few clicks and support by chat at any hour. If you like to tinker and you put the renewal date in your diary, it does the job.

It does not suit an owner who wants to forget about hosting. The renewal more than triples the price, and a WordPress site on cheap hosting still needs someone to keep it updated. Hostinger is one of the two hosts I inherited through clients, and one of the two I would not set up for a small business owner today.

OVHcloud: who it suits, and who it does not

OVHcloud suits technical users: developers, agencies and businesses that want a French provider with its own data centres, and that may need more than hosting later, such as servers or a long list of domains in one account. It is a long-established company, founded in 1999 and listed on the Paris stock exchange since 2021.

It does not suit an owner who wants to change a phone number on the site and get back to work. The Control Panel is dense, faster help is sold as separate paid support plans, and the May 2026 change showed that the price you sign up at can move. I only work in OVH when a client’s domain or site is already there.

Infomaniak: who it suits, and who it does not

Infomaniak suits small businesses that want one provider for the domain, the site and the email, and that care where their data is kept. It is a Geneva company with its own Swiss data centres, and its tools go beyond hosting: kSuite for email and storage, and SwissTransfer for sending large files, which I find far better than WeTransfer.

It is not the pick if the lowest possible first-year price matters more to you than anything else. And if you want to be billed in pounds, check the currencies on offer before you order.

If your business is in France, o2switch is the other host I recommend: a French company based in Clermont-Ferrand, with its own data centres, the familiar cPanel interface and phone support in French.

Do you need a web host at all?

Check this before you compare hosts, because many small business sites do not need one.

• Squarespace, Wix or Shopify: hosting is part of the subscription. You need a domain and an email provider, not a web host. Every client who came to me from WordPress called in an emergency, so I move owners who edit their site alone to Squarespace, where hosting, security and updates come with the plan.
• A simple static site, coded by hand or built with AI: GitHub Pages hosts it for free, within limits, and this site runs on it. GitHub says Pages is not meant to run an online shop or a SaaS, so keep it for a brochure site.
• WordPress, a custom PHP site or a shop on your own software: you need a host, and this comparison applies. Spaceship also sells hosting, and my guide to Spaceship hosting explains which of its products fits which site.

How to choose in five minutes

1. Decide who will edit the site. If it is you, without help, look at a builder first; if you need a host, start with Infomaniak.
2. Write down the renewal price, not the offer, and multiply it over four years, with VAT if you cannot reclaim it.
3. Check where the data will be stored, and that you can download a full backup yourself.
4. Decide where your email will live, and keep a copy of the domain’s DNS records before you change anything.
5. Put the hosting account, the domain and the invoices in your company’s name, not your web designer’s.
6. Note the renewal dates in your calendar, and switch on auto-renewal for the domain.

When to hand it over: if a site is already live and email runs through the domain, a move done in the wrong order can cut your email for hours. The same goes for a site still held by a former provider who has the access. Choosing the host and connecting the domain is part of every website project I deliver. And if your site will live on a builder, you may not need a host, or me, for this part at all.