Web Hosting Buddy

Hostway has an enormous global presence, and currently has more than 600,000 customers. You will find that the company offers a wide range of hosting plans, and is a good solution for individuals, and small, medium or even larger companies. With shared and dedicated hosting plans, Hostway seems to offer something for everyone.

The company is not what you would call a “budget” host, so those seeking a bottom-dollar solution might not find this the best option available. However, with that said, they do offer a lot of features and functionality for their clients, and are certainly not the most expensive host out there.

Feature List

Pricing Concerns
Hostway offers quite a few different hosting plans. Their shared plan starts off at $6.95 per month (regularly $13.95 per month), and comes with the features listed above, as well as several others. Of course, the company also offers dedicated hosting plans, exchange hosting and even cloud hosting plans, depending on your needs.

While none of these options is quite as low-priced as some other hosts out there, you do gain some significant advantages. For instance, the 30-day money-back guarantee and 99.99% uptime guarantee are both nice additions to these packages.

Reliability and Uptime Factors
You will find that Hostway is one of the most reliable webhosts in the world, consistently earning high marks from both watchdog groups and from their own customers. With more than $100 million invested in the company’s data centers, you can expect your website to be up and running almost all the time.

Control Panel Information
If you are an experienced web user, then you might find that the custom control panel offered by Hostway to be a bit challenging. The company does not use an industry standard like cPanel, vDesk or Plesk. Rather, they feature a custom solution that was developed specifically for the company. You will also find that the control panel is a bit more basic and somewhat lacking in features. However, beginners will likely find that the control panel is relatively easy to use, since they do not have to unlearn their familiarity with another program.

Customer Support and Service
Another area where Hostway falls somewhat below the industry standard is in customer support. They do offer customer support via phone and email. However, the phone support system is only available for those customers enrolled in the Gold plan or higher. Linux users receive no phone support at all. Email support is available to all customers, though it can be somewhat slow. However, there is a large knowledge base to search, as well as a FAQ section. Of course, this means that Hostway might not be the best solution for those who do not have a DIY mentality.

SuperGreen is a UK-based webhost that offers environmentally friendly policies and procedures, as well as affordable, reliable webhosting. In fact, this company is 100% carbon neutral, and makes use of advanced servers with industry-best efficiency ratings. Of course, the company provides numerous benefits for their customers, with a professional hosting environment that features numerous tools. The company offers cPanel, as well as MySQL databases, unlimited bandwidth and a “host” of other features that should tempt you into checking out what they have to offer.

Features List

Pricing Concerns
Watching your budget is enormously important in these days of economic stagnation. However, you will find that SuperGreen is green in more ways than one – they help you put more green back in your own pocket. Hosting solutions through this company are quite affordable – starting at just £2.95 per month. For UK-based individuals and companies, this makes a lot of sense.

Of course, you will also find that the company is very straightforward and simple to work with. Their drag and drop site builder makes creating a website an easy process even if you don’t know any HTML. You will also find that the script library is of tremendous use. Finally, their 99.9% uptime guarantee helps you ensure that you get the best return possible on your investment.

Reliability and Uptime Factors
You will find that SuperGreen offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which has certainly become the standard across the industry. To achieve this goal of stability and reliability, SuperGreen uses advanced server technology, 100% green energy and redundant power systems, as well as redundant backup systems mirroring data for safekeeping. Of course, if you find that you are simply not happy with their service for whatever reason, you can cancel at any time during the first 30 days and get a full refund of your money.

Control Panel Information
Super Green uses the vaunted cPanel to help ensure that their customers are able to easily manage their entire account. cPanel is the highest rated, most popular control panel software in the world, and gives you an amazing array of features. You can control your email accounts, modify individual pages, access the knowledge database, change your account information and an infinite number of other things from this panel.

HostRocket has been around for several years now, a decade, actually. This company was founded with the intention of revolutionizing the world of webhosting, and they have at least made a dent in that world. The main hallmark of the company is affordable dedicated hosting – you’ll find that their pricing tiers are low priced when compared to other webhosts out there. They also offer access to cPanel (for an extra fee) and are responsible for hosting 50,000 websites now. If a managed solution is something that you want, this company might be the best choice.

Features List

Pricing Concerns
The price you pay for hosting is enormously important. Traditionally, paying for dedicated hosting is considered more expensive than shared hosting plans. However, HostRocket offers affordable access to good dedicated hosting options. The company offers only a single hosting plan, but it comes in four different flavors based on the length of the contract you sign with them. If you choose to pay by the month, you’ll pay $11.98 per month. A six-month plan drops that to $8.99 per month. Signing up for a year of service gets you the price of $7.99 per month and a two-year contract gives you $5.99 per month.

Reliability and Uptime Factors
HostRocket offers their customers a state of the art data center with numerous redundant power and backup systems. However, the company’s uptime guarantee is only 99.5%, which is below the industry standard of 99.9%. This means that HostRocket has more downtime than some other hosts out there, particularly more than the very few that offer a 100% uptime guarantee.

What does this mean for customers? Simply put, it means that you will have to deal with a bit more downtime.

Control Panel Information
HostRocket offers different ways of accessing your site. For instance, you can pay the extra $29.95 per month to use cPanel, you can use the company’s custom solution or you can allow HostRocket to manage your hosting for you completely. Obviously, for those who want to take a more hands-on approach to it, you’ll need to get cPanel up and running. This has become the most popular control system in the industry and offers numerous ways to maintain, modify and organize your website.

Customer Support and Service
HostRocket provides their customers with several ways to get in touch with the company. You can contact customer technical support via a toll free telephone line 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. You can also email the company support desk for assistance and open a service ticket. The company also offers a good forum where you can interact with other customers and gain answers to your questions, or you can peruse their in-depth FAQ and help documentation for an answer to your query.

Begun in 2003, Arvixe is a relatively small webhosting company. They have grown considerably since their beginnings, and now serve several thousand websites and have garnered quite a few awards. The goal of the company has always been to provide solid, affordable webhosting for individuals and small to midsize companies.

There are three aspects to the Arvixe system – reliability, quality and affordability. You will also find that the company offers customers a considerable number of features and functions to help improve their website’s usefulness and performance.

Features List

Pricing Concerns
While hosting with Arvixe is certainly affordable, finding the right plan for your needs can be a bit confusing. The company breaks their packages down into several different tiers and sublevels. For instance, the PersonalClass is broken down into the base category and PersonalClass PRO (additional costs).

There are also several other classes, including ResellerClass, VPSClass, and DedicatedClass. Each of these comes with different sublevels for features and pricing, so it can take some time to determine just which one is right for your needs. However, once you do determine the best package for you and complete the signup process, activation is fast and efficient.

Other ways that you will find a good return on your investment include the free website transfer service. This ensures that if you have existing websites with other hosts, you can easily transfer them to Arvixe without worrying about any hassles or additional costs. Finally, the company also offers a 50% discount to returning customers.

Reliability and Uptime Factors
The uptime of your webhost is an essential element to having a beneficial relationship. Arvixe offers 99.9% uptime for their clients. If the company does not provide this for you, they offer a refund for the hosting fees for that month. Coupled with the company’s 60-day money-back guarantee, this helps to ensure that you are able to make the best decision for your hosting needs.

Control Panel Information
Unlike other companies that choose to offer a proprietary control panel, Arvixe uses cPanel. This gives their customers a considerable degree of control over their website, their domain, their email accounts and much more.

Customer Support and Service
Making sure that your webhost offers the best in customer support is vital. If you do not have access to the support that you need, you can quickly find that your relationship with that host turns sour. Solid customer service is required to have a fully functioning website. You will find that Arvixe offers solid customer support 24 hours per day, all through the year. You can contact customer support via email or you can call them directly.