Hostinger VPS Setup Guide: From Zero to Running in 15 Minutes

Before setting up your Hostinger VPS, make sure you have:

• A Hostinger account with a VPS plan purchased (KVM 1 at $4.99/mo is fine to start)
• A terminal application (Terminal on Mac, Windows Terminal, or PuTTY on Windows)
• Basic comfort with typing commands — you don't need to be an expert
• An SSH key pair (we'll show you how to create one if you don't have it)

After purchasing a VPS plan, Hostinger's panel will prompt you to configure your server:

1. Choose your operating system — we recommend Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for beginners (most tutorials and guides target Ubuntu)
2. Select your data center — pick the location closest to your users. US East (Ashburn) for North America, Amsterdam for Europe, Singapore for Asia.
3. Set a root password — make it strong (16+ characters). You'll switch to SSH keys shortly.
4. Click Create — provisioning takes 1-2 minutes

Once complete, you'll see your server's IP address, root username, and the data center location in the VPS dashboard.

Open your terminal and connect to your new VPS:

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Accept the fingerprint prompt (type "yes"), then enter your root password. You're now connected to your server.

Set up SSH keys (strongly recommended):

# On your LOCAL machine, generate a key pair:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@example.com"

# Copy the public key to your VPS:
ssh-copy-id root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

# Test key-based login:
ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP  # Should connect without a password

Once key-based login works, disable password authentication for security (see our security guide).

First things first — update all packages:

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Set up a basic firewall with UFW:

# Install UFW
apt install ufw -y

# Allow SSH (important — don't lock yourself out!)
ufw allow 22/tcp

# Allow HTTP and HTTPS
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp

# Enable the firewall
ufw enable

# Check status
ufw status

Create a non-root user for daily operations:

adduser deploy
usermod -aG sudo deploy

# Copy SSH keys to the new user
rsync --archive --chown=deploy:deploy ~/.ssh /home/deploy

Docker is the easiest way to deploy applications on your VPS. Install it with the official script:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sh get-docker.sh

# Allow your non-root user to run Docker
usermod -aG docker deploy

# Install Docker Compose
apt install docker-compose-plugin -y

# Verify installation
docker --version
docker compose version

Docker is now ready. You can deploy any containerized application with a single docker compose up -d command.

Let's deploy a simple Nginx web server to verify everything works:

# Create a project directory
mkdir -p ~/apps/hello-world
cd ~/apps/hello-world

# Create a docker-compose.yml
cat > docker-compose.yml << 'EOF'
services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    restart: unless-stopped
EOF

# Start the container
docker compose up -d

Visit http://YOUR_SERVER_IP in your browser — you should see the Nginx welcome page. Your VPS is live!

From here, you can deploy anything: WordPress, Node.js apps, AI agents, Discord bots, or full development environments. Check our guides for specific deployment tutorials.