Hostinger Reach Review (2026): An Honest First Look at the Free Plan

For a newsletter sent from your own domain, the technical hurdle is DNS: SPF, DKIM and DMARC records that tell Gmail and Outlook your emails are really from your domain. Reach’s main selling point for Hostinger customers is that it can add those records for you.

Reach was connected to bytepicks.tech on 26 October 2026. Below we cover what the free plan includes, what changed in our DNS, what our account shows for billing, and what you should test before trusting it with a real list.

What Hostinger Reach is built to do

Going by Hostinger’s documentation and pricing page, Reach covers the basics of a small newsletter:

• Writing emails with AI. You describe your brand, and Reach drafts a campaign that you then edit.
• Contacts and sign-up forms. You can add contacts by hand or by CSV, group them into segments, and build sign-up forms. Hostinger says WordPress sites can also sync contacts through an integration.
• Campaign reports. Open, click and unsubscribe rates for each campaign.
• Sending from your own domain. Reach sends from your domain, and won’t send campaigns until that domain is verified.

Paid plans raise the limits (Grow, for example, allows 500 recipients and 3,500 emails a month). The free tier is sized for a list that’s just getting started.

What the free Starter plan gives you

These figures come from Hostinger’s Reach pricing page and subscription documentation, checked on 27 October 2026. Prices were shown in US dollars and may differ by country and promotion.

Three rules matter more than the headline numbers:

• The 100-recipient limit counts unique people per month. If you email 100 different addresses, you’ve hit the limit, even if you delete some of them afterwards. Limits reset on the first of each month.
• 200 emails is two sends to a full list. With 100 subscribers, that’s one newsletter every other week and nothing else.
• The free year can be claimed only once, and the plan renews as a paid plan afterwards (see the billing section).

Removing Reach branding is listed as a Grow feature, so expect free-plan emails to carry Reach branding. Scheduling also appears only from Grow up, which on the free plan probably means sending campaigns manually. We haven’t checked either of these in the app.

Connecting bytepicks.tech: what our account shows

The details below are account observations, not a hands-on walkthrough of the app. They come from our Reach account’s records and our domain’s DNS zone, retrieved through Hostinger’s API by the AI assistant we use for research on 26–27 October 2026. Our domain is registered in the same Hostinger account as Reach, which affects how quickly things happened.

• Timing: Reach’s records show the profile was created at 13:47 UTC on 26 October 2026, and the sending domain as connected and active 32 seconds later.
• DNS records: Reach added three kinds of record to our zone:

Later the same day, email forwarding for hello@bytepicks.tech was set up with a different service, which needed its own SPF entry. A domain may have only one SPF record, so both services were merged into a single line rather than adding a second. Reach’s DNS check accepted the merged record. It also accepted our MX records, even though they point to the forwarding service and not to Hostinger’s mail servers, which Reach suggests by default.

A verified domain doesn’t prove deliverability

A passing DNS check means the authentication is set up correctly. It doesn’t tell you where your emails will land. Inbox placement also depends on how you collected your list, how people react to your emails, the content itself, and the reputation of the servers sending them.

We haven’t sent a campaign from Reach yet, so we can’t tell you whether its emails reach the inbox. Before you rely on it, send your first campaign to a few addresses you control, then:

1. Check the inbox and spam folders in at least two providers, such as Gmail and Outlook.
2. In Gmail, open Show original and confirm that SPF, DKIM and DMARC say PASS, with DKIM signed for your own domain.
3. Click the unsubscribe link to make sure it works.

Billing: what our account shows vs. the public price

The public pricing page says Starter is free for one year and then renews at $1.49 a month. Our own account presents it differently. Our Reach subscription is listed as a trial with auto-renewal switched on, renewing one year after sign-up.

The practical point: the free year turns into a paid plan unless you switch auto-renewal off, so check the amount and renewal date in your own Hostinger billing page.

Who Reach suits, and who should look elsewhere

Based on the limits above, Reach Starter fits:

• a new blog or small business on a Hostinger domain, starting a list from zero;
• someone who emails once or twice a month and wants the authentication records handled for them.

It’s a poor fit if you:

• already have more than 100 subscribers;
• need scheduling or automated sequences from day one (both are listed only on paid plans);
• need proven deliverability data before choosing a tool. We can’t supply that yet.

If you’re comparing free plans from other providers, see our guide to the best email marketing tools for beginners.

Hostinger Reach review: what we still need to find out

A full verdict needs things we haven’t done yet: sending real campaigns, checking where they land, trying the AI writer, and testing the WordPress integration. Until then, this is what we can say. Reach made the technical setup quick on a Hostinger domain, and its limits and renewal terms are clear once you know where to look. Whether it’s a good place to grow a newsletter depends on results we haven’t measured.

Our analysis: what the free plan really allows

“100 recipients and 200 emails a month” sounds roomy. In practice, the email allowance runs out first. The numbers below use Hostinger’s published limits (checked 28 October 2026) and our own arithmetic.

How often you can send

Each newsletter to a full list of 100 uses 100 of the 200 monthly emails:

A weekly newsletter therefore needs Grow, even with only 100 subscribers. Grow allows 3,500 emails a month. Weekly sends to its full 500 recipients use 2,000–2,500, so there’s room for about seven sends a month.

Cost per subscriber

Grow costs more in total. Per subscriber, though, it’s far cheaper once a list grows past 100. These are public USD prices before tax. Your checkout may show a different currency or amount, so check it before you rely on these figures.

What our DNS reveals

On 28 October 2026 we looked up bytepicks.tech’s public DNS. Reach’s SPF entry, _spf.reach.hostinger.com, authorises relay.mailchannels.net, the MailChannels relay network. That suggests Reach hands its mail to MailChannels for delivery. Hostinger’s Reach pages we checked don’t say this directly, so treat it as an inference from the record.

The same lookup answers a practical question: what happens to SPF when you add a second email service. SPF allows at most 10 DNS lookups. Our merged record, covering Reach and our ImprovMX forwarding, uses 3. That only tells you the record is within the lookup limit. It isn’t a full check of email authentication, which also depends on DKIM, DMARC and how each service signs its mail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources (checked 27 October 2026): Hostinger Reach pricing, Reach subscription details, Connect your domain, Getting started with Reach.