Hostinger vs Wix: Publish Free First or Prepay to Build

The short answer: if you want a site live this week and to pay only once it earns its place, Wix publishes on its Free plan with a wixsite.com address, and its Light plan adds your own domain for $17 a month on a yearly subscription paid in full, 12 x $17 = $204 a year. Hostinger's AI Builder trial runs 7 days but cannot publish, and its Premium plan is $47.88 for 12 months or $119.52 for 48, renewing at $10.99 a month (USD, checked on 26 October 2026 on the Wix plans page, the Hostinger pricing page and Hostinger's credits docs). Choose Wix if your job is a business site with bookings, payments and marketing that a non-technical team runs in one editor. Choose Hostinger if your job is several sites, or an AI-built web app you can export, at the lowest yearly cost.

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Wix is a website builder and domain registrar first, with business tools wired into the same dashboard: a store, scheduling, a blog, events and email campaigns, and an AI agent called Aria that edits alongside you, per its AI website builder page. Hostinger is a host whose plans now include an AI Builder; in agentic mode a chat writes the code, sets up a database and shows a live preview, per its AI Builder docs. One gives a small business a dashboard to run. The other gives it a site, and room for more sites.

Before you open either editor:

1. A year on each, with the arithmetic. For example, Wix Light is 12 x $17 = $204 and Wix Core is 12 x $29 = $348, both paid at purchase, per the plans page. Hostinger Premium is $47.88 for 12 months, or $119.52 / 4 = $29.88 a year on the 48-month term, per its pricing page. The cheaper sticker is Hostinger's; the question is which editor your team will still use in a year.
2. The domain and content you already own. Wix's free domain voucher is only for a new domain bought from Wix and cannot renew one you already hold, per the plans FAQ. If you own the name, connect it on either. Gather the logo, the copy and the booking calendar before the trial clock starts.
3. The number the site answers to. Enquiries or bookings per month, counted for four weeks before launch and four weeks after. Without that baseline, a nicer site and a better site look the same.

Four plans on one table

Read on 26 October 2026 on the Wix plans page, the Hostinger pricing page and Hostinger's AI Builder pricing page. Wix says prices vary by location and exclude tax; Hostinger's exclude VAT.

Three things that separate them

Live before you pay

Wix lets you create and publish free, on an address like username.wixsite.com/sitename, and upgrade when you want your own domain and no Wix branding, per the plans FAQ. Hostinger's trial lets you build and preview one project for 7 days with no card, but a plan is required to publish, connect a custom domain or export code, per its credits docs. If you need to show a client or a partner a working page before anyone pays, Wix gets you there.

A business dashboard, or a builder that writes code

Wix's Core plan adds payments, basic eCommerce and scheduling to the site, so the booking calendar and the checkout live where the pages do. Hostinger's agentic mode builds a React app with its own backend, and the plan includes up to three websites on Premium and unlimited websites from Unlimited. A salon that takes bookings fits the first. A team that wants a product demo with sign-ups, or three campaign microsites, fits the second.

How the money is committed

Wix quotes its plans by the year on the page read here. Hostinger shows a 48-month figure first and offers 1, 12 and 24-month terms on the same selector. Wix's 14-day refund covers the first upgrade; Hostinger's 30 days apply to every transaction, renewals included, under its refund policy.

Blog drafts by an agent, published by a person

Wix runs an MCP server that lets an AI client search Wix's documentation and make API calls on your sites; it is a built-in connector in Claude, and other clients add it at https://mcp.wix.com/mcp. Wix's Blog API keeps creating a draft and publishing it as separate actions, per the Draft Posts reference.

1. Connect the Wix MCP to the account that owns the site.
2. Ask for three blog posts as drafts on that site, from your outline and your last three published posts as the style guide. Wix's sample prompts include one that also publishes; leave that instruction out.
3. The human check: a person opens each draft in the Wix dashboard, checks every claim, price and date against the business, and publishes the ones that pass.

The free comparison

Wix's Free plan and Hostinger's 7-day trial cost nothing, and between them they answer the editor question. Build the same homepage on each: your opening paragraph, a contact form and your opening hours. Then ask the person who will update the site each month to change the hours on both, without help. The one they finish first is your builder.

Then look at how Wix states its prices. Its plans page quotes every figure as a yearly subscription paid in full at purchase, notes that other periods are available, and steers buyers to yearly or multi-year plans, per the plans page. So the $17 most people compare is a $204 commitment that Wix collects on day one, and a month-to-month figure appears only at the purchase step.

Wix suits a team that

• Runs bookings, a small shop or events from the same site and dashboard.
• Wants to publish free first and upgrade once the site earns its place.
• Has nobody technical, and wants an AI agent inside the editor.

Hostinger suits a team that

• Needs several small sites or campaign pages on one prepaid plan.
• Wants an AI-built app with a database, and the option to export its code.
• Prefers a four-year price printed with its renewal.

More on Hostinger in its entry and in how to use Hostinger, which takes a campaign page from prompt to domain. Wix has no entry on this site.

FAQ

Can I publish on Wix without paying?

Yes. The Free plan needs no card and publishes on a free Wix address; your own domain and the removal of Wix branding come with a Premium plan, per the plans page FAQ.

Does Hostinger's AI Builder publish during the trial?

No. Trial projects can be built and previewed but not published, and a trial store cannot take payments, per the credits docs.

Which one lets me take the site elsewhere later?

Hostinger lists code export among the things a plan unlocks, per the same docs. The Wix plans page read here says nothing about exporting a site, so ask Wix before you build on it for the long term.