Live:Hostinger's 48-month pricing is down to$2.99/mo— free domain + SSL included.
See the dealWhat Hostinger's 30-day money-back guarantee covers, what it excludes, how to request a refund and how long the money takes to come back.
Hostinger gives you 30 days to change your mind on any plan. If you request a refund inside that window, the hosting fee comes back. The guarantee is genuine and it applies to every plan, from Premium at $2.99/mo up to the VPS and cloud tiers.
The complications are all in the edges. Domain registration fees are typically not refundable. Some add-on services sit outside the guarantee. And the 30 days start at purchase, not at the moment you first log in — so if you buy a plan and leave it sitting for five weeks before building the site, you have already used the window.
This guide covers what is covered, what is not, how to ask, and how long the money takes.
The guarantee covers the hosting fee for the plan you bought. That includes:
The window runs for 30 days from the purchase date. It is a single window per purchase, not per year and not renewable.
Practical rule: treat day 25 as your decision deadline, not day 30. If you are going to request a refund, do it with five days of slack. Support queues and time zones do not care that you were technically inside the window.
This is the part most refund guides skip.
| Item | Refundable? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting plan fee | Yes, within 30 days | The guarantee applies to the plan itself |
| Domain registration fee | Typically no | Registration is paid onward to the registry and cannot be reversed |
| Free domain claimed with a plan | Deducted from the refund | The domain has already been registered in your name |
| Some add-on services | Usually no | Third-party add-ons are provisioned and billed immediately |
| Renewal payments | Outside the guarantee | The 30-day window applies to the initial purchase |
The domain point matters most. Hostinger includes a free domain for the first year on its web hosting plans. That domain is not literally free to Hostinger — it pays a registry fee. If you take the domain and then refund the plan within 30 days, expect the standard domain registration fee to be subtracted from the amount you get back.
If you plan to refund, the cleanest sequence is to request the refund and deal with the domain separately. You can keep the domain and pay for it, or let it lapse. Either way, ask support to confirm the deduction before you agree to it.
There are two routes, and both work.
The exact labels move around as hPanel is updated, so treat the above as the general path rather than a fixed menu. The two things you are looking for are your purchase list and a cancel action.
This is the route we recommend, because it creates a written record.
Live chat first response on English requests is typically around a minute, which makes chat a reasonable place to start — but ask for the ticket, because chat transcripts are harder to reference later.
Write the request, do not just describe it. A message that says “I would like to cancel and request a refund under the 30-day money-back guarantee for the Unlimited plan purchased on 3 August” is resolved faster than “I want to stop using this.”
This is the single most common mistake. People stop logging in, assume the plan has lapsed, and then find a renewal charge months later.
Stopping use is not cancelling. The plan stays active, the term runs out, and it renews at the standard renewal rate — $10.99/mo for Premium, $16.99/mo for Unlimited, $25.99/mo for Cloud Startup.
Two separate actions are needed:
Do both, and confirm both in writing.
The refund is issued by Hostinger promptly after approval. The time it takes to appear depends entirely on the payment method.
| Payment method | Typical time to appear |
|---|---|
| Credit or debit card | Several business days after the refund is issued |
| PayPal or wallet | Often faster than card, sometimes within a day |
| Bank transfer | Slowest — can take longer than card |
| Cryptocurrency or similar | Varies; usually returned in the same currency |
Card refunds are the slowest to appear because the delay is on the card network’s side, not Hostinger’s. If a refund has been confirmed in a ticket and has not appeared after a week, the next step is to ask your bank whether a pending credit is visible, then go back to the ticket with that information.
Request in writing. A ticket is evidence. A chat message is weaker.
Keep the ticket number. Every follow-up should reference it.
Screenshot the purchase. Your order confirmation shows the date, which is what the 30-day window is measured from.
Ask for the amount before you agree. Confirm any domain deduction in writing.
Take a backup before you cancel. Cancelling a plan will eventually remove the files. Export anything you want to keep — database dump and file archive — before the cancellation completes. If the plan is being refunded because the site is moving elsewhere, do the migration first and the refund second.
Do not buy a long term you are unsure about just because it is cheap. The 48-month term on Premium is $143.52 upfront. The 30-day guarantee makes that a low-risk experiment, but only if you actually run the experiment inside the window. If you are genuinely undecided, a shorter term costs more per month and carries less exposure. Our price reference breaks down the difference in totals.
If you are still choosing between plans, the pricing page and the plan finder are better places to spend your time than the refund process. Refunds are a safety net, not a shopping strategy. And if you are weighing a coupon against a longer term, our coupon guide explains why the term matters more than the code.
Maya Ross
Lead hosting reviewer
Maya has migrated more than 400 sites between hosts and spent the last six years benchmarking shared, cloud and VPS platforms for small businesses.
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