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I Tried Hostinger’s New Horizons AI Developer Tool: Is the Hype Justified?

When Hostinger released their new Horizons AI developer tool back in March, I was excited to try it. At the same time, I was also skeptical about the extent of its abilities.

As a general fan of Hostinger, I didn’t think they were going to release a shoddy, money-grab product. However, I’ve seen (and tried) one too many of the “latest AI tools” that overpromised and underdelivered. So my assumption going into it was that Horizons was going to fall somewhere in the range of decent to mind-blowingly good.

I Tried Hostingers New Horizons AI

The tool is marketed as an easy way for non-developers without a technical background to build their own apps, but it can also be used to build websites. I decided to try both and I will share the results with you, as well as my overall thoughts on Hostinger Horizons’s strengths, limitations, and usefulness. But first, let’s briefly go over how it works.

How to use Hostinger Horizons

To get started, go to the Horizons website:

Hostinger Horizons landing page

As you can see in the screenshot above, getting started with Horizons is as straightforward as using ChatGPT or Claude. I would argue that it’s even more straightforward because there aren’t any models to choose from or options to tweak. It’s nothing more than a chat window where you describe what you’d like to build.

If you have samples or example images you’d like Horizons to use for inspiration, you can attach those with your prompt. Either way, it gets to work immediately.

This “take it and run with it” approach is actually something that I didn’t like when I started using it. I even specifically instructed it to not start building right away, but it ignored me and did so anyway.

Despite being initially mildly annoyed, it turned out to be only a minor issue. Nonetheless, I would have preferred to map out my idea before getting started.

I think the tool could benefit from having an optional startup wizard. Especially since it’s primarily aimed at non-developers, who might have great ideas, but probably also a lot of blind spots. A wizard could help them flesh out their idea in greater detail before moving into the “build it” phase.

An overview of my experiments with Hostinger Horizons

Altogether, I ended up running two experiments where I built the following:

  • A somewhat complex time-keeping app with advanced features.
  • One page website with interactive scroll effects.

1. Time-keeping app with advanced features (try it here)

Complex time keeping app dashboard.
Dashboard of my time-keeping app

I began with the more complicated of the two challenges because I was curious how far I could push the tool before I started hitting speed bumps. It did eventually happen, but overall, I managed to get quite far in only a few hours. Here are the features that I added to the app:

  • Dashboard with various pieces of information that are pulled from other areas of the app
  • Time tracking that lets you start a timer, pause it, and end it to complete a shift. You can also manually add shifts and edit existing shifts. In addition, there is a toggle that switches between a list view of your shifts and a calendar view.
  • Clients and projects area where you can add clients, set your pay rate per hour, as well as the currency you’ll be invoicing in. You can also create projects under each client, which can help you track what you’re working on.
  • Invoices that are customizable with your logo and that you can export as PDF files.
  • Profile section where you add your personal and business information, which then gets populated into the invoices.

What went right 😁

Right off the bat, from the very first iteration that Horizons created, the aesthetics were on point.

Although I didn’t include anything about colors, fonts, or how I wanted the app to look in my initial prompt, the result I got back was very modern and attractive. It seemed to lean in the style of what the Hostinger website might look like in a dark theme:

Original iteration of the time keeping app

Beyond that, I was able to fix some initial bugs with prompts and I got the app to a point where it seemed to work. The buttons did what they were supposed to – at least it seemed like it at first glance. I could fill out all the fields, make my choices, export my made-up invoices as PDFs, etc.

However, upon doing some more comprehensive testing, it turned out that some of the features didn’t actually work the way they were supposed to. The first glances were misleading.

What went wrong ☹️

The biggest bug that I discovered was that the core feature of my app didn’t work. That is to say, it didn’t track time properly.

I was able to start the timer and watch it tick away, second by second. I was also able to use the pause and stop buttons. However, if I went to another tab and left it on – which you’d do in a real-life scenario – the actual time that passed when I went back to it was way more than what the timer showed.

For instance, I left it on for about an hour, but when I checked on it, it showed that only nine minutes had passed.

There were also some other bugs with certain data not being pulled into the dashboard.

In defense of Horizons, I did not attempt to fix these bugs with further prompts because I wanted to move on with the other experiment.

I also felt like for the amount of time I put into it (about three hours in total) and what I got in return was incredibly impressive. Perhaps not deployable just yet, but definitely mind-blowing. Especially when you consider that five years ago, it would have taken a professional developer a few weeks (if not longer) to get the same prototype.

And if I was a developer working on this as a serious project, I could export the code and manually fix the bugs myself.

2. One page website with interactive scroll effects

For the website experiment, I decided to rebuild my own portfolio site. I wanted to add some interactive scroll features to it that I saw on another one page website.

I initially attempted to paste the entire source code of the inspiration site into Horizons. However, I ended up going over the character limit by ~63,000 characters! 🙈 To work around this limitation, I took screenshots of the source code instead. I then fed those to Horizons in a few batches:

Hostinger Horizons reading source code of site and recreating it

With each batch, it extended the sections and scroll effects of the site.

When I had enough sections built, I gave Horizons a screenshot of my existing, live site. I asked it to extract the text and use it to rebuild the site in the style of the template we had been working on up to that point.

Afterwards, I prompted it to substitute all the placeholder links and images with the real ones from my site. I also had to ask it to correct some portions of text that were transcribed incorrectly.

When all was said and done, I was able to successfully recreate the one page website from scratch. It took me only 16 prompts!

React Tailwind desktop version of my site.
Desktop version
React Tailwind version of my site in mobile
Mobile version

What went right 😁

The biggest thing that went well was that Horizons was able to rebuild the site and incorporate the requested scroll effects from the inspiration website. They weren’t identical, but similar, and appealing in their own way.

I liked the result so much that I even exported the code because I will probably use it in some capacity:

Exporting code from Hostinger Horizons

What went wrong ☹️

Although Horizons did hit some minor bumps in the road on the path to the finish line, I was able to fix all but one of them.

It was such a minor detail that I only bothered to try to fix it once. When it didn’t work, I asked Horizons to simply delete it. The “it” was two words that had strike-through text. For whatever reason, Horizons couldn’t get the strike-through effect to render.

Other than that, everything else that went wrong was temporary and fixed with follow-up prompts.

So is Horizons worth it?

In my opinion, Horizons is a game-changer in many ways, and has something to offer people of all technical backgrounds.

  • Non-developers with absolutely no technical background can use it to build simple applications and custom websites with relative ease. Some adjustments will need to be made along the way, but the destination will absolutely be reachable.
  • Non-developers with some technical chops will be able to get even further, building more complex apps and sites. If you understand how to use the inspect tool on your browser, this alone will take you far when hitting a wall with Horizons.
  • Developers may even benefit the most from using Horizons – despite the tool not being marketed at them. Going from idea to prototype used to take weeks or even months, but with Horizons, the time is cut to mere hours. The fact that you can export the code and then modify it yourself is what makes this such a valuable tool. It would be even better if you could import code into Horizons as well, but perhaps Hostinger will add that in the future.

Overall, I believe that Horizons is a valuable service with unique strengths that go beyond what either ChatGPT or Claude can give you in response to coding prompts. As long as you are realistic about your expectations, maximize your prompts, and have some patience, you can use it to build some really cool projects.

Horizons pricing

If you’re interested in trying Horizons yourself, Hostinger is currently offering a free seven-day trial. No credit card required. You can head straight to the Horizons website right now and start playing.

The trial does cap you at five prompts per day, which isn’t much on a per-day basis. However, that totals out to 35 prompts over the course of the seven days.

That might not seem like enough, but remember that it only took me 16 prompts to rebuild my portfolio site from scratch and 18 prompts to build an initial version of my time-keeping app. Granted, the app had bugs, but the larger point is that you can absolutely get something out of those 35 prompts if you take a smart approach.

The downside is that you won’t be able to publish it unless you sign up for a paid plan. The entry-level Starter plan is affordable though. And if you end up getting a working (or close-to-working) prototype by the end of the trial, then the cost of at least one month is easily justifiable (so that you can keep your work).

Hostinger Horizons pricing

Have you tried Hostinger Horizons yet? What did you think of it? If you built something interesting, share it in the comments below. I’d love to check it out.

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Martin Dubovic
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Karol K
May 29, 2025 10:44 am

This is an interesting take on AI code/app generation “thing.” It seems like it has a very specific system prompt or config, meant to really try to deliver something that looks right on first go – it’s the only way to convince someone to subscribe I guess. But then, the user will likely realize there’s a lot of stuff missing under the hood later on…like you have. 😃

Tom
July 28, 2025 9:49 pm
Reply to  Karol K

agree, I asked duck duck go ai for a list of sites built with Horizons as Hostinger said they didn’t have that info, anyways three quarters of them were currently down. Horizons is relatively new.

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