lee_mcr
Member
OP
- Joined:
- Sep 2024
- Posts:
- 242
- From:
- Manchester, UK
Celebrating a small win tonight.
Taught my mum to use Hostinger's file manager. She's 74. Never touched a website in her life. Now she's uploading photos of her garden for the village allotment society. Proper proud.
She called it "the blue screen with all the folders." We got there in the end. Three hours. One accidental deletion of the entire public_html (bless the trash bin feature). She made a cuppa afterwards and said "that wasn't as bad as the supermarket self-checkout."
Anyone else done generational tech support with this lot? Their file manager is actually decent for beginners. No SSH needed.
Honey badger don't care... about downtime
GeorgeNmp
Member
AS64512
- Joined:
- May 2024
- Posts:
- 218
- From:
- Ashburn, US
Their file manager is actually decent for beginners.
This is genuinely heartening to read. However, I must correct a small point: what Hostinger provides is not technically a file manager in the traditional sense. It is a
web-based FTP client (specifically a JavaScript frontend to a PHP-based FTP bridge, by my inspection of the network traffic). The distinction matters because true file managers operate at the filesystem level with proper permission semantics, whereas this abstraction layer introduces latency and occasional synchronization issues with inode metadata.
That said, for a 74-year-old user, the reduced complexity is a valid tradeoff. I taught my mother SFTP via FileZilla in 2019. She managed adequately. Last year I introduced her to SSH key-based authentication with a YubiKey. She now runs her own static site generator (Hugo 0.118.2) and deploys via rsync over WireGuard. Age is not the limiting factor. Interface design is.
iBGP, eBGP, don't care, just peer
RAJ
Member
- Joined:
- Jul 2024
- Posts:
- 294
- From:
- Mumbai, IN
Guys this is nice and all but im thinking business here
How many of these "mum taught" users convert to paid plans? Any leads on margins for the beginner segment?
I run a small Hostinger reseller shop. My clients are mostly small business guys who dont know hosting from hole in ground. I spend 3-4 hours per client on basic file manager training. My time is money.
- Do you guys charge for onboarding? I tried once, clients balked. Now I eat the cost.
- Recieved some tips from another reseller to use video tutorials instead. Their suggestion was Loom or similar.
Whats your take?
your margin is my opportunity
tallinnying
Member
Night Shift
- Joined:
- Aug 2024
- Posts:
- 268
- From:
- Tallinn, EE
Works on my end
Your mum deleted public_html because she didnt read the docs
Hostinger has a knowledge base article on file manager basics. Paragraph 3 line 7 warns about the delete button
RTFM
If she cant handle a simple GUI she shouldnt be near a website
Not downtime, not a bug, user error
RTFM
builds at 3AM, sleeps at noon
lee_mcr
Member
OP
- Joined:
- Sep 2024
- Posts:
- 242
- From:
- Manchester, UK
Your mum deleted public_html because she didnt read the docs
She's 74 mate. She reads the Manchester Evening News and Catherine Cookson. She doesn't read knowledge base articles. That's why I was there.
The trash bin saved us. That's the point. Good UX for beginners means forgiving mistakes.
Honey badger don't care... about downtime
GeorgeNmp
Member
AS64512
- Joined:
- May 2024
- Posts:
- 218
- From:
- Ashburn, US
Good UX for beginners means forgiving mistakes.
Precisely. The trash bin implementation is a soft-delete with a 30-day retention, which is architecturally sound for this use case. I completed my earlier thought: I taught my mother (82, Ashburn) to use cPanel's File Manager in 2019. She now maintains a WordPress site for her book club. The key was not the tool but the
recovery path from error.
I would note that Hostinger's Vilnius datacenter serves European users with acceptable latency. My traceroutes from Ashburn average 110ms, which is tolerable for file manager operations though suboptimal for real-time applications.
iBGP, eBGP, don't care, just peer
