Hostinger Website Builder (October 2026): AI Builder Plans & Limits

What is Hostinger’s AI website builder, exactly?

A quick history helps, because the naming has changed twice. Hostinger’s original drag-and-drop builder was once branded Zyro; it later became the Hostinger Website Builder. In 2026, Hostinger merged that classic builder with Horizons — its standalone AI app builder — into a single product now called AI Builder. Hostinger’s own FAQ on the builder page says it plainly: the drag-and-drop experience is the Manual mode inside AI Builder, sitting alongside a conversational Agentic mode. You can read the full story of what Horizons became on our Hostinger Horizons explained page.

In practice, that means one dashboard with two ways to build. Manual mode gives you the familiar grid editor: pick from hundreds of designer templates, drag sections into place, and tweak text, colors, and images yourself. Agentic mode works the other way around: describe the site or web app you want in plain language — typed, or even by voice or image prompt — and the AI generates the design, copy, and structure for you. You can switch between the modes on the same project, which is the genuinely useful part: let the AI draft the whole site in minutes, then polish it by hand in Manual mode without spending another credit.

Every plan bundles the builder with actual web hosting (so your site lives on Hostinger’s servers, not some separate platform), a custom domain free for the first year, an SSL certificate, and email mailboxes free for the first year. That bundle is the whole pitch: one checkout, one bill, one dashboard — domain, hosting, builder, and email together. The live card above shows the current price of the Premium plan; the three plan tiers are compared in detail below.

What do the three plans include?

AI Builder comes in three tiers — Premium, Unlimited, and Cloud Startup — and they differ in how many sites you can build, how many AI credits you get, and whether ecommerce is switched on. The table below lists what we verified on Hostinger’s builder page in October 2026. Prices are deliberately not printed here; they live in the cards on this page, which pull from our price database and cannot go stale.

The names map onto the old hosting tiers you may remember: Premium is the starter (a few sites, the basics), Unlimited is the renamed Business plan and the one Hostinger positions for growing businesses, and Cloud Startup adds maximum performance and the Hostinger Agent credits for people who want AI help managing the site itself. For most first-time builders, the real decision is between Premium and Unlimited: the jump buys you unlimited sites, the ecommerce switch, and three times the AI credits.

How do AI credits actually work?

AI credits are the fuel for Agentic mode, and the rules are refreshingly simple once you see them. Each plan includes a one-time gift of credits: 5 on Premium, 15 on Unlimited and Cloud Startup. Generating a site or app with a prompt spends credits; editing by hand in Manual mode costs nothing. That asymmetry is the whole strategy for stretching your allowance: draft the full site with the AI, then do every tweak, text change, and image swap in the drag-and-drop editor for free.

How far do the credits go? Hostinger’s own documentation gives the rough math: a simple business page usually takes 5–10 credits to generate, while a more complex web app takes 15 or more. Do the arithmetic and the honest picture emerges: Premium’s 5-credit gift covers roughly half a simple site build, while Unlimited’s 15 credits cover one solid build with a little room to iterate. Credits also power AI features on your live site — each time a visitor uses an AI chatbot or content generator, fractional credits are consumed — though for a typical brochure site that drain is slow.

Two more credit facts worth knowing. First, you can try Agentic mode with free trial credits before paying anything — no card required for the trial — so you can see exactly how many credits your project eats before committing. Second, the 30-day money-back guarantee applies while you have used fewer than 30 AI credits, which is generous headroom for evaluating the tool on a real project.

Manual mode vs Agentic mode: which should you use?

They are not rivals; they are two ends of one workflow. Here is how to think about each:

The workflow that gets the most finished site per credit is a hybrid: describe the project to Agentic mode and let it generate the structure, pages, and starter copy. Then switch to Manual mode and refine everything — headlines, photos, colors, sections — without spending another credit. Think of Agentic as the architect who raises the frame in an afternoon and Manual as the interior designer who makes it yours over the following days. Starting in Agentic and finishing in Manual also sidesteps the most common complaint about pure-AI builders: a site that looks impressive at first glance but says nothing specific about your business until a human rewrites it.

Can you sell online with it?

Yes — on Unlimited and Cloud Startup, where ecommerce is switched on. (Premium does not include a store; that alone settles the plan choice if you intend to sell.) The pitch is strong for a budget builder: 0% transaction fees, more than 100 payment methods, and support for physical products, digital products, print-on-demand, and services, with orders, inventory, and shipping managed from one dashboard. You can even ask the AI to generate product titles, descriptions, and images from a short description of what you sell.

The limits are the usual ones for an all-in-one builder at this price. Independent reviewers consistently note that it suits small catalogs rather than large operations — think dozens of products, not thousands — and there is no plugin marketplace to bolt on features the builder does not ship with. If your store needs subscriptions, complex bundles, or point-of-sale hardware, you are looking at a platform built specifically for commerce rather than a builder with commerce added. For a side store, a merch line, or digital downloads, though, the 0% transaction fee math is genuinely hard to beat: the builder takes no cut beyond what your payment processor charges.

What are the real limits?

Every honest builder review lands in the same place: Hostinger’s AI Builder is excellent at getting a good-looking site online fast, and it has a ceiling. Here are the limits that matter, stated plainly:

• No plugin ecosystem. WordPress has tens of thousands of plugins for anything the core cannot do; AI Builder has what it ships with. If you later need a membership system, a booking engine with unusual rules, or a niche integration, there is no app store to turn to. This is the fundamental trade-off against WordPress, and it is worth deciding on day one.
• The credit ceiling is thin. Five credits on Premium and fifteen on the higher plans is a starting allowance, not an ongoing one. Heavy tinkerers — people who regenerate the whole site five times chasing the perfect hero section — will feel the meter. Independent reviewers consistently flag credit consumption as the thing to watch.
• Design polish has a ceiling too. The AI-generated starting points are usable and modern, but reviewers note they do not reach the bespoke polish of a Squarespace template or the depth of control in Webflow. If your brand lives or dies on a distinctive visual identity, budget for a designer or a more flexible tool.
• Small-site sweet spot. Portfolios, blogs, business sites, landing pages, and small stores are the bullseye. Large content archives, complex web apps with custom backends, and high-traffic publications will eventually want more control than a closed builder offers.
• Top-up pricing is unpublished. Worth repeating because it is the one unknown cost: when the included credits run out, Hostinger says you can buy more, but the price list is not public. Do not build a business plan that assumes cheap refills.

None of these are deal-breakers for the audience the builder is made for. They are simply the difference between a tool that launches your first site this weekend and a platform you grow into over five years. Hostinger is upfront about most of this on its own pages; the credit top-up pricing is the one thing we wish were published.

Who should buy it — and who shouldn’t?

Buy if you want a professional site online fast without touching code: freelancers, local businesses, portfolios, bloggers, and anyone launching a small store. The AI draft plus free manual polishing is a genuinely good workflow, the bundle (hosting, domain, email) removes every separate purchase decision, and the price is among the lowest for an AI builder anywhere.

Don’t buy if you need WordPress plugins, a large or complex store, or total design freedom — get web hosting with WordPress instead, where the ceiling is far higher. And if you are mainly curious about the old Horizons app-building side, read our Horizons guide first so you understand exactly what Agentic mode can and cannot build.

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