If you have landed on Hostinger Horizons and are not sure what happens after you type your first prompt, this is the guide I wish existed before I tried it myself. I built a real website from scratch, watched exactly where the free credits went, hit the publish paywall, and asked Hostinger support to clarify the parts the interface does not explain on its own.
Note: Horizons now lives under the broader Hostinger AI Builder brand.
Two Ways to Start
Hostinger gives you two entry points before you even sign up.
- Type a prompt directly. Describe the website you want in the text box on the homepage and click Start for Free
- Pick a template first. Scroll down to the Templates section, browse by category, hover over one to preview it, then click Use Template to start from that design instead of a blank prompt
I tested the prompt route, since that is the flow most people picture when they hear “AI website builder.” If you already have a strong visual reference in mind, though, starting from a template and customizing it can save you a round or two of back and forth with the AI.
Writing a Prompt That Actually Works
The prompt box does not reward vague requests like “build me a nice website.” Specificity is what separates a thin, generic result from something that actually looks built for your business. Here is the prompt I used:
“Create a website for a small independent bookstore called Marginalia Books. It should have a homepage introducing the store and its focus on used and rare books, a Shop page showing a few featured books with prices, an Events page listing a monthly book club meeting, and a Contact page with a newsletter signup form. Use a warm, literary tone.”
A few things about why this works as a starting prompt:
Signing Up
Clicking Start for Free takes you to account creation before anything gets built. This step only asks for an email, a password, and an optional phone number, or you can sign up with Google or GitHub. No payment details anywhere on this screen, which matters if you are hesitant to hand over a card just to see what the tool can do.
Choosing Your Building Style
Once your account exists, Horizons asks how you want to build before it generates anything. This is the first real decision point, so it pays to understand both options rather than clicking whichever one is highlighted.
Manual hands you a drag-and-drop editor. You place text, images, and sections yourself and see each change happen instantly. According to Hostinger’s own FAQ, Manual mode does not use any AI credits at all, which makes it the safer choice if you are worried about running out of credits before you finish.
Agentic works through conversation instead. You describe what you want in plain language, and the AI builds and adjusts the site for you, an approach Hostinger calls vibe coding. This is the mode marked “Uses AI credits” on the selection screen, and it is also the more capable option, since Hostinger’s FAQ notes that Agentic mode can go beyond static websites into web apps, SaaS products, and custom tools with their own logic. Manual mode is limited to landing pages, portfolios, and online stores.
I chose Agentic, since it is the mode most people associate with “AI building a website for me” and the one that deserves the deeper look in a getting-started guide. If your priority is stretching a small number of free credits as far as possible, Manual is the more conservative starting point.
Watching It Build
After choosing Agentic, the interface drops you into a live build screen. Your prompt appears at the top, followed by the AI narrating what it is doing in plain language, in my case, setting up the store integration first before touching any page content.
While it works, Hostinger runs you through a short interactive guide explaining what is happening. It walks through roughly seven steps, covering things like how to follow the AI’s progress in the chat panel and how publishing works once you are ready.
The whole process, from submitted prompt to a finished four-page site with a working store, took about six minutes for me. The chat log kept a running account of what it built along the way, files edited, pages and routing set up, and a final summary once everything finished.
What I Got
The finished result held up well for a single AI-generated pass. The homepage led with a strong headline and a real photograph-style hero image, the Shop page had six stocked products with working cart and checkout wired to Hostinger’s ecommerce backend, the Events page covered the book club, and the Contact page had the newsletter form I asked for.
The copywriting was the most surprising part. Lines like “We deal in used and rare books, the annotated, the out-of-print, the inexplicably still-in-print” read like something a real copywriter would write for an independent bookstore, not generic filler text.
The site also picked up small, specific details on its own that I never asked for, a running volume count on the homepage, a “since 1998” founding detail, and category tags across the top of the shop page like First Editions and Foxed Endpapers, the kind of texture that makes a generated site feel like a real business rather than a template with new words dropped in.
A couple of small details were off, though, and catching them matters before you consider a build finished and ready to publish. One product listing had garbled placeholder text where a book title should have been, and a storefront photo further down the homepage showed a shop sign with nonsense lettering instead of a real name, a known limitation of AI-generated imagery with text in it.
Neither issue would have been obvious from a glance at the top of the page, so scroll through every section, not just the hero, before you trust a build enough to publish it.
How Far Five Credits Actually Get You
This is the number most people actually want to know before they start. My free account began with 5 AI credits. By the time the build finished, generating the full site, wiring up the store, and writing all the page copy, my balance was at zero.
In practice, that means 5 free credits covers roughly one complete small-business site built in a single conversation, not much room for extensive back and forth revisions afterward.
According to Hostinger’s own pricing FAQ, credit cost varies by task, small edits cost less than building a new feature from scratch, and any AI-powered feature you add to the site, like a chatbot for your visitors, also draws from the same pool.
Editing After Credits Run Out
Once my balance hit zero, I tried toggling on Select and Edit, the feature that lets you click directly on page elements to adjust them. Instead of opening the editor, it showed a paywall.
This confirms something you should know going in. Manual adjustments made through this in-preview editor still draw AI credits, even though it feels like a simple manual action rather than an AI-generated one.
I confirmed this directly with Kodee, Hostinger’s support assistant, and the explanation was direct. AI prompts and AI-powered changes pause once credits hit zero until they reset or you top up, and manual adjustments inside the editor can also consume a small number of credits, so those can become unavailable too.
Your project itself is not deleted or locked away when this happens. It stays saved exactly as it was built, you just cannot make further AI-assisted changes until you add credits or upgrade.
The Ecommerce, Data, and Code Tabs
Three tabs sit along the top of the builder alongside Preview, and it helps to know what each one does before you need it.
- Ecommerce opens a full Store Manager, separate from the main chat interface, with sections for Orders, Products, Subscriptions, Discounts, Customers, and Analytics. My store setup showed 1 of 4 steps complete, with Add Payment Method still pending, since connecting a real payment provider like Stripe requires a paid plan
- Data shows a dashboard for any data collection features you add, like user accounts or contact forms, along with example prompts for adding them
- Code exposes the actual project file structure and source code, letting you see exactly what the AI generated, down to individual React components
Publishing Your Site
Clicking Publish is where the free experience ends. Rather than going live, it opens a paywall explaining that publishing, connecting a domain, and getting more AI credits all require a paid plan.
I asked Kodee directly what publishing actually requires, since the interface itself does not spell this out clearly. A few things to know before you get to this point:
Pricing and What Each Tier Actually Gets You
Three paid tiers sit behind that paywall, and the credit allocations deserve a close look before you pick one, since the jump from the cheapest to the middle tier matters more than the price difference suggests.
| Plan | Price | Websites | AI credits for building | AI agent credits |
| Premium | From $2.99/mo | Up to 3 | 5 | Not included |
| Unlimited | From $3.99/mo | Unlimited | 15 | 500 |
| Cloud Startup | From $7.99/mo | Unlimited | 15 | 1,000 |
The detail to catch here is that Premium only grants 5 AI credits for building, the same number you get for free before paying anything.
If your main frustration was running out of credits during the free build, upgrading to Premium alone does not solve that, you would need Unlimited or Cloud Startup to actually get more room to work with.
If you are comparing Horizons against Hostinger’s core hosting plans rather than deciding purely on AI credits, my Hostinger review covers the wider hosting lineup and real performance testing in more depth. Also, don’t forget to check for any available Hostinger coupons.
Leaving and Coming Back
If you close your browser mid-project or step away for a few days, your work is not lost. I confirmed this with Kodee directly, and the project saves automatically as you work, no manual save step required.
The one caveat is that it is best to wait until your latest prompt or change finishes and shows up in the preview before closing the tab, rather than navigating away mid-generation. Your project also depends on an active hosting plan to remain accessible long-term, if that plan expires or is canceled, access can be restricted and the project may eventually be deleted.
