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Onome Amuge
Hostinger, the Lithuanian web-hosting group that has climbed the Financial Times’ ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing companies for six consecutive years, is taking an early bet on Nigeria’s small-business internet economy. But rather than leading with raw speed or price (the typical marketing playbook in hosting), the company is positioning itself around AI-driven productivity, wagering that automation, rather than infrastructure alone, will define the next era of Africa’s digital expansion.
Its entry coincides with a period of rapid expansion in Nigeria’s digital economy, which is growing faster than the wider GDP. Government data shows the sector generated about N7 trillion in the first half of 2025, representing more than 14 per cent of total output. Yet this momentum contrasts sharply with the realities facing many of the country’s 41 million SMEs which continue to face sluggish websites, murky pricing structures and technical hurdles that make building a reliable online presence difficult.
Hostinger sees the fragmented SME market underserved by global cloud players and fatigued by unreliable local providers as a gap left open by incumbents. The company is rolling out Naira-denominated payments, localised content and round-the-clock support, but its bigger differentiator is an aggressive integration of generative AI across its platform.
“In markets like Nigeria, people are not just choosing between hosting companies. They are choosing between running a business offline or online. Our aim is to remove the friction entirely,” says Eiviltas Paraščiakas, Hostinger’s head of communications.
Where most global hosting groups treat AI as an add-on, Hostinger is using it as the front door. Nigerian entrepreneurs will gain access to tools such as Hostinger Website Builder, which integrates AI for content writing, image creation and SEO — along with Hostinger Reach, an AI-powered email marketing platform, and Hostinger Horizons, which can generate websites and simple web apps without requiring coding skills.
The company’s most ambitious play, however, may be Kodee, its in-house AI agent introduced more than two years ago but now becoming central to its commercial strategy. Kodee can migrate websites, generate blog posts, manage WooCommerce product catalogues, search and register domains, and execute more than 350 tasks typically handled by human support teams or external contractors.
The agent handled 855,000 customer interactions in September 2025 alone, resolving 76 per cent of them without human involvement, up from just 50 per cent at the start of the year. Internally, this automation generated savings of over €750,000 in a single month, with annual projections surpassing €9 million. The company says these efficiencies enable it to keep prices lower in emerging markets while expanding the features available to new users.
The company said its Nigerian launch functions as more than just geographic expansion, noting that it is a test case for scaling an AI-led model across emerging markets. This is as local SMEs increasingly depend on digital channels for credibility; whether running online stores, showcasing portfolios or setting up booking systems for service businesses. Yet many remain first-time website owners who require guided onboarding and instant troubleshooting.
Hostinger’s bet is that AI can close this skills gap faster than traditional support teams or classroom-style training. The company says its tools allow users to build a site within minutes, a proposition that resonates in a country where mobile-first entrepreneurs operate with limited time and often without technical backgrounds.
Hostinger already serves more than 4 million users across 150 countries, employing roughly 900 staff worldwide. Its expansion into Nigeria continues a pattern of targeting fast-growing but underserved markets, a strategy that helped it secure second place in the FT & Statista Long-term Growth Champions: Europe 2026 ranking.
The company’s challenge now will be balancing its AI-driven global operating model with Nigeria’s infrastructure realities, including inconsistent broadband reliability and fluctuating energy costs. But Hostinger appears confident that the direction of travel, more SMEs moving online, more creators monetising digital skills and more economic activity shifting to the web, plays to its strengths.
