HostMonster Review
HostMonster is one of the oldest web-hosting platform which was founded back in 1996, and it was merged with Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2015. butIt offers you a range of web hosting and VPS hosting plans, on a budget price range, with world’s largest support team. But does it worth of buying or not? Well. let’s have a look on its pros and cons.
Pros.
1. Above Average Uptime (99.97%)
While talking about the performance of a web host, one thing that needs to be noticed, is its uptime rate. If the uptime rate of a web host is low or the the site often faces some downtime, then you may lose a lot of audience. So, it is better to choose a web host for your site, that guarantees you a better Uptime rate. Otherwise, the risk is yours.
We tested the services of HostMonster for our website for past 10 months and found its uptime rate pretty impressive. The average uptime of our site that we saw during the whole testing period was 99.97% which is .03% higher than industry standards. We did not expect its uptime to be that much great. It was a pretty awesome thing about this web host. The average uptime during the whole testing period is listed below.
2. Better Response Time (870ms)
One thing which makes a concern about a web host, is its response time. It was giving us a second thought about hostmonster too to use their services or not, because their response time was horrible in early ages. Even in the starting time of our testing period, it was more than 1000ms. But thank God, it’s getting better with time. And right now, it’s almost dropped down to 770ms. It looks like that the people at HostMonster, are trying to make their services better for their customers, to make a healthy long-term relationship with them, as it’s being said that ‘the client’s satisfaction is always their first priority’. Well, average page Load Time during the whole testing period of 10 months is listed below.
3. Decent Support team
Support services by HostMonster, were also quite impressive. We were connected to a customer support agent within 5 minutes and all our queries were answered/resolved in about 2 or 3 minutes each. This is a quite impressive thing that we didn’t expect from this kind of web host. Once again, it surprised us with its descent and efficient support services. So for customer support, it’s got a 10 out of 10 marks because of its good support team. Other than that, it even offers a wide range of customer support, including Live-Chat, Phone and Email as well. This make is it a better choice for new users that are concerned about support services of their web host.
4. Great Security option provided
HostMonster provides you best security features like HotLink Protection, SSL Support, SSH access, Regular Site Backups and Spam Assassin Protection as well. This make it a cool choice for a secure web host. If you want a customer oriented web host that provides you the best security features, than you can easily go with hostmonster, it’s a good choice. At Least better than some others in the market.
5. Quick Setup Process
Unlike some other web hosts in the market, Hostmonster doesn’t require a mobile phone verification and it promises a quick, easy and effective setup process with fast provisioning of it’s VPS and other plans. This is a good news for those customers who are from outside of U.S. because with some other hosts, it’s been a terrible process to verify from their phone and it’s got a great headache for them to register for a web host or get a VPS plan. But that’s not the case with HostMonster. It doesn’t require that much hassle. Other than that, it even offers you a free domain name registration with all new plans as well. This makes it even better choice for new users.
6. Perfect Value for money
Although it’s the cheapest plan (starter) is not that much cheap in the market ($4.95.month) but it is the perfect value for money right now out there. You can get 50GB SSD storage and Unlimited bandwidth in even basic plan as well. Plus, you can even get $100 Google Adwords and $100 Bing Ad Credits as well, which can be used for the promotion and advertising of your business/website. And you can add even more open source apps from the marketplace where 100s of free awesome apps available for your website. So, this isn’t really a bad deal to pay that much fee for an awesome web-hosting package.
Cons.
1. Prices are too high for lower-time plans
They don’t offer monthly subscription plans and even in anual plans, they charge too much higher fee than the advertised $4.95/month as well. If you want the advertised fee plan, than you’ll need to purchase a 3-year plan. Otherwise, if you wanna pay for 2-years or anual plan, then get ready to pay a lot. Other than that, the 3-year fee is pretty reasonable for the services, but annual package fee, which is $6.95/month, is so high and not a thing that you can go with. So keep in mind while getting their services.
2. Hidden charges
While getting their services, you’ll see a ton of hidden charges as well. At first, their promotional low cost charges are just for new users, and will expire at the time of renewal and after that, you’ll have to pay a fee of as low as $9.95/month instead of $4.95/month for basic plan for 3-years. And other than that, nothing is like ‘Free Domain’ in HostMonster. You’ll be charged with a fee for the domains as well, which is non-refundable too.
3. Paid Backups
Hostmonster doesn’t provide you free backups and restores. They’ll charge you a monthly fee of $1.99 for their backups, if you want them. Otherwise, there’s not a big issue with that as well. But there are some othe web hosting companies in the market which are providing this feature free in their low cost plans, which are even cheaper than this one as well.
4. Too much charge for site migration.
There are a lot of web hosts in the market which are offering free website transfers to their hosting services but that is not the case with HostMonster. It charges a flat $149.99 one time fee for the website transfer, every time when you transfer a website to their hosting service. Other than that, you can transfer up to 20 websites to their servers easily, without any problem, but the process is too much costly and expensive, so we don’t recommend that.
Prices and Plans:
While talking about hosting plans, there’s not too much to say about HostMonster. They offer shared hosting, along with Dedicated servers hosting and VPS as well and all these plan are listed below.
Shared Hosting plans;
There are three plans which HostMonster is offering right now, that are listed below.
VPS Hosting;
HostMonster provides you four kinds of VPS Hosting plans which are listed below.
Other than this, all these plans include following as well.
Dedicated Server Hosting;
HostMonter provides you three Plans in Dedicated Hosting as well, which are listed below.
- Standard: This plan costs you as low as $79.99/month and includes 4 core 8 threads Intel Xeon processor with 3MB cache, 4GB Ram, 500GB Storage (RAID1), 5TB/month Bandwidth, Free Domain Name, 3 IP Addresses and CentOS 6.5 (64bit).
- Enhanced: This plan costs you as low as $99.99/month and includes 4 core 8 threads Intel Xeon processor with 8MB cache, 8GB Ram, 1000GB Storage (RAID1), 10TB/month Bandwidth, Free Domain Name, 4 IP Addresses and CentOS 6.5 (64bit).
- Premium: This plan costs you as low as $119.99/month and includes 4 core 8 threads Intel Xeon processor with 8MB cache, 16GB Ram, 1000GB Storage (RAID1), 15TB/month Bandwidth, Free Domain Name, 5 IP Addresses and CentOS 6.5 (64bit).
Other than this, these plans include following as well.
Do We Recommend HostMonster?
Well the answer is both Yes and No. It has some awesome Features, good Uptime, great support and the page load time is getting better with time and even, its security features are awesome. And if you are looking for a dedicated hosting or a vps plan then it is better suitable for you but not for the regular web-hosting needs. It’s hidden charges and renewal costs are awful. This is not so suitable for a regular client. Plus its site migration is also too much expensive and you have to pay an extra fee for even ‘free’ domain as well and you they don’t even give you free backups as well. So, Unfortunately we cannot Recommend it for regular hosting needs. But yeah, VPS and dedicated hosting plans are perfect.
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