Web Hosting Reviews

Finding a good web hosting is always one of the most critical decision you’ll have to make when starting off a new website. However, webmasters (especially newbies) often fall into web host scams due to lack of market research.

Seeing such, we believe a list of recommended (and NOT recommended) web hosting services should be very handy for shoppers who are looking for web hosting services.

Web hosting review in a glance

In a hurry? Check out our web hosting reviews in just a glance here. For personal and small business usage, we strongly recommend shoppers to go for Blue Host or Hostgator.

Top web hosting recommendation: BlueHost

BlueHost Web Hosting

Frankly, we are keen to talk about BlueHost, mainly because of the good experience we had with them as well as all the good things we heard about them.

If you’re looking for a reliable web host with *real* quality customer support, then BlueHost is your choice. Rapid customer support, extremely low (nearly zero for all packages!) server downtime, reasonable pricing… we actually found most BlueHost users rating their service a full 10/10 marks.

BlueHost: Standard features and pricing

BlueHost offers 300GB diskspace and 3,000GB bandwidth in their standard package for a reasonable price - $7.95/mo (on annual basis). Their features are pretty similar with others, you’ll get standard hosting features such as 24/7 live call support, email supports, cPanel control panel, multiple database supports, Fantastico supports, FTPs, unlimited sub domains, and domain parking.

Customer feedbacks

There are plenty of good feedbacks (recent!) about BlueHost around the Internet, you should be seeing them everywhere online if you try ‘Google’ around. For the ease of reading, we’ve quoted a few from the reviews we read online:

“Bluehost excels in customer service. In fact, their customer service alone makes them worthy of one’s business.They are also stable, reliable, offer very good pricing, and a great feature set. Highly recommended.” — May 23rd, 2007 by Sophia @ Web Hosting Jury.

“All and all, BlueHost seems like a good web host. The company certainly has their act together and by all means can be labelled as a top quality web host with great features and support.” — by Douglas Hanna @ Click Fire.

“My wife and I have recently subscribed to Bluehost, and as the individual working on the site etc etc all I can say is that Bluehost is a 15 out of 10 for service, space, bandwidth, ease of use, etc etc! No host compares….not even close!” — April 29th, 2007 by Dan Lirette @ Web Hosting Stuff.

For more details or instant order, we suggest you to visit BlueHost online now.

Other recommended web hosting: Hostgator

Hostgator is another web hosting with strong reputation in their server reliability and customer service. In fact, they receive tons of good comment from their users all the time. Same as BlueHost, Hostgator provide reliable server with long uptime as well as helpful customer support.

The only reason we pick BlueHost against Hostgator is because of its pricing. For 100GB diskspace and 1,000GB bandwidth, Hostgator is charging their users $9.95/mo. We think the hosting cost with Hostgator is a bit overprice, especially when BlueHost, with the same level of service quality, is offering a lower price $7.95/mo but higher diskspace and bandwidth.

For more details, you can visit Hostgator online here.

Other recommended web hosting: Host Rocket

Unlimited bandwidth for just $4.95/mo - Rocket Host is definitely one of the top choices if you’re looking for cheap hosting services. More over, their customer service is up to the market standard and their server is very very reliable (Rocket Host owns, and maintain their own data server, equipped with tight network security, at Clifton Park, NY).

We actually read quite a lot of good feedbacks for the web host company, here’s one of these feebbacks that we would like to highlight:

Besides being assured that your website is hosted in one of the most technologically advanced Data Centers around there are many other benefits of hosting with HostRocket like loads of freebies, e.g., a free Domain, Free site design, free scripts, web scripts, phone support. At the time this review was being written they were offering a iPod everyday to one lucky winner.

So hey, if you’re looking for some cheap reliable hosting, remember to check out on Host Rocket.

Other recommended web hosting: PowWeb Hosting

Without doubt PowWeb hosting customer service is not at the top level for the industry. They do receive quite some complaints on slow and unhelpful customer supports.

However, PowWeb’s is reliable (long uptime record!) and their service comes in a very decent price. With just $5.77/mo, you can get 300GB diskspace and 3,000GB of bandwidth!

Our conclusion? If you are looking for budget hosting with acceptable server reliability, PowWeb is your choice. Visit PowWeb online here.

Other web hosting that we do not recommend

AN Hosting

Well, we actually found equal amount of positive and negative feedbacks on AN Hosting - which prove that they are not that bad. However, due to its bad reputation on unresponsive customer supports and lack of Awstats features in their services, we think shoppers should look else where.

Apollo Hosting

Apollo provides simple and affordable web hosting services. They were reputable and reliable in the past however recent customer reviews show that their customer supports are doing terribly bad. More over, with a price of $6.96/mo for 50GB diskspace 500GB bandwidth, we think they over charging their clients way too much.

IX Hosting

Although IX Hosting offers the best bargain in term of price (500GB diskspace 3,500GB - $6.96/mo), they have huge problem with their server reliability. There are lots of complaints on the long server downtime, and what shock us the most is that they actually lost some of their user’s data recently!

“They lost all my data! According to their tech support, a power surge at their datacenter wiped out the Sql database running our on-line store. The power surge took out both the production and backup servers. Huh? Only a single backup? What happened to Ups protection, multiple/redundant backups, off-line storage and off-site storage? Seems like basic data protection to me… They tout reliability on their web site to no end — but at this point it seems like advertising hype, not reality. Hundreds and hundreds of man-hours down the tubes…” — June 30th, 2007 by Alan Engard (www.engard.biz) @ Web Hosting Stuff.

iPowerWeb

Poor customer support, long server down time - in short, not recommended.

Network Eleven

The worst web hosting we can found online. Terrible customer support, highly overpriced services ($6.95/mo for 20GB bandwidth data transfer!) - some customers are unable to cancel the hosting service and were forced to cancel off their credit card to stop Network Eleven from charging their card. Avoid them at all cost!

Side Note: There’re plenty of new comers in the web hosting industry and one of them that pull our attention is HostMonster (owned by BlueHost). We have no time to review them at the moment but in case you’re looking for a new web host - they’re too, recommended in your consideration list.