Host Authority

Hostway is a well established hosting company offering packages that appeal to both individuals and businesses.

While they might not be the best hosting solution for novice web developers and beginners, they offer lots of customization options and the ability to upgrade to higher performance hosting plans with ease.

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Hostway isn’t nearly as popular now as they were ten years ago.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

Hostway offers various features that make them stand out from the rest (see the top rankings here).

1) 6 Months Free Managed Servers: HostWay has a very generous offer of 6 months free managed servers. If you want to try out managed servers but don’t know what the process entails, now you have a risk-free way of doing so with HostWay.

Managed servers negates the need for in-house IT, so you can focus on your business rather than worrying about day-to-day tasks like backups, patching, updates, and more. HostWay guarantees 100% uptime for their managed servers and offers 24/7/365 support by their in-house data center. You can also customize your solutions to match your goals and optimal hosting environment. You can add on managed security services, ideal for PCI-compliance initiatives or HIPAA compliance.

2) Geographically Dispersed Datacenters: HostWay has 4 geographically dispersed datacenters in North America: Austin, Chicago, Tampa, and Vancouver. Having multiple locations presents several advantages. Customers have the ability to choose one or more locations, although the location of cloud resources shouldn’t really matter. People tend to like knowing where their infrastructure resources are located, so giving them that option is nice.

Redundancy is another advantage of having geographically dispersed datacenters. If a natural disaster or some other catastrophe cripples one location, there are other locations for backup or recovery purposes. Reduced latency is also a big advantage. Companies in the West Coast, Australia, or East Asia can connect to the Canadian cloud to bring their servers closer to their own time zone. Likewise, people in the Central Time zone can connect to the datacenter in Austin and people in the Eastern Time zone can connect to Tampa.

3) Brand Ambassadors: HostWay has their own word-of-mouth program that is slightly different than a regular referral program. It’s called Brand Ambassadors – it’s an elite group of their customers who share their success stories on social media, review sites, blogs, and HostWay’s Ambassador page. Common review sites are Webhostdir.com, Hostsearch.com, Whoishostingthis.com, Besthostratings.com, among others.

Brand Ambassadors get entered into a drawing every quarter for a prize and are the first ones to receive updates about beta releases and special products. The drawing prizes are worth your time, the last one being an iPad for the winner. To get started with HostWay’s Brand Ambassador program write a user review and then fill out a simple form on their website telling them your information and the URL of the review.

Customer Support

Hostway has a pretty good customer service reputation in the hosting space.

The support team can be reached 24/7, year-round by calling (866) 467-8929 or by opening a chat discussion.

Reviews

We have looked at several online sources for Hostway reviews. We found that users are split in their opinion about tech support.

Here one customer is happy with their service: “We have never had an unscheduled outage in all of that time and the customer service has always been very responsive and knowledgeable when we’ve needed help with changes.”

Another reviewer writes: “Whenever I have a question tech support can resolve it in the shortest possible time. I would recommend Hostway for it’s excellent service both in it’s reliability and tech support.”

We also found several negative reviews for Hostway’s customer support and billing.

One frustrated customer states: “Their support is by far the biggest joke I’ve ever ran into. They can’t solve even basic issues. I ended up walking them through what they had to do to fix things.”

Another upset reviewer writes: “Totally shady company! Offers absolutely no refunds. Automatically bills you in advance even if you have requested them to stop.”

Pros

1) Cloud and Managed Hosting: HostWay’s primary emphasis is on cloud hosting solutions (public, private, dedicated private, hybrid) and managed hosting. If cloud and managed hosting are what you’re looking for, you’ll find a lot of options with HostWay.

2) Virtual Data Center Tours: Hostway’s website shows an interactive tour of virtual data center, which is a good way to learn about how their geographically dispersed datacenters operate.

3) Support: Hostway offers the standard 24/7/365 support via phone, ticket system, email, and support chat. There are different ways to get in touch with support staff for each type of hosting – cloud, VPS, managed servers, etc.

4) cPanel and Plesk Included: For managed hosting services, you can choose between cPanel and Parallels Plesk Panel, two of the most popular control panels. They’re easy to use, intuitive, and practical.

5) VIP Support Upgrade Option: Whatever plans you purchase come with 24/7/365 support, but you also have the choice of upgrading to VIP support. This includes a special phone number and email that guarantee priority response and also free file restoration, valued at $99.

Cons

1) Confusing Product Offerings: It’s good to have many options, but HostWay’s website presents them in a way that’s confusing to look at. There is a separate page for each plan type and you have to click on a different page to see a comparison of all plans.

2) Limited One-Click Installations: HostWay offers a slew of one-click installers but the options are limited. Their website currently shows 11 applications under content management, ecommerce, forums, online learning, photo gallery, projects, surveys, and wiki.

3) No Money-Back Guarantee: HostWay offers no money-back guarantee, although with 6 months free managed servers, that wouldn’t be necessary.

Summary

HostWay’s products aren’t really appropriate for someone looking for a simple shared hosting plan.

They’re more appropriate for people looking for scalable cloud solutions and managed servers, or a hybrid of both. They have geographically dispersed data centers to increase speed and reduce latency.

HostWay isn’t a bad hosting company at all, but there are better options out there for beginners and smaller businesses.

Click here to see the #1 rated web hosting

WebStarts caters to beginners and novices looking to start a new website.

They give you a free website and an easy to use website builder to help you get started right away, even if you’ve never made a website before.

Click here to see the #1 rated web hosting

(If you are and advanced web master, or you have a blog or website that gets a lot of traffic, you might want to check out the top VPS and dedicated server hosting companies.)

WebStarts started picking up some serious popularity around 2008.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

WebStarts has some cool features, but nothing too out of the ordinary when it comes to cheap web hosting plans.

1) Free Website: Free websites might be a relic of the past since Yahoo shut down Geocities some years ago, but WebStarts is one of the very few hosting companies still offering it. Of course, there are limitations. You can’t have a custom domain name and the number of web pages you can create is limited to 5. And there are dreadful ads shown on all pages.

But the reason it’s still a good deal is because it’s free and it gives you a good chance to experiment with WebStarts’ support and their website builder. Their free templates are very attractive and follow all modern trends and design practices. If you’re looking for a simple portfolio or personal website, WebStarts’ free plan would be perfectly reasonable. Support is limited for free websites however. Only paid versions are able to use phone support. Users of the free option are limited to email and help documents.

2) Rich Website Builder: WebStarts’ website builder has more features than typical website builders. They’ve teamed up with WePay to let you accept credit card payments right away. You can create custom forms and integrate your website with Twitter, Pinterest, or other social media sites. You can create a “members only” part of your website. You can make one page designs with anchor links, which is not a very common feature of a drag-and-drop website builder. Their image editing features are fairly sophisticated, with the ability to set image opacity. You can completely customize their existing templates with different images and text, so you don’t end up having the same boring website design as everyone else using the same template.

3) Designer Platform: You can easily become WebStarts’ partner through their designer platform, with your own web design without knowing code. Designer Platform allows you to create and sell websites without writing a line of code. You can save your designs as templates to save time and streamline your process. You can brand your designs with your own logo.

This is an interesting platform for budding designers. It’s similar to selling your own WordPress themes, except you don’t have to know how to build complicated themes yourself. There is no mention of how big this platform is and how many people are involved, but if anything, it’s a good platform to test your skills and improve your designs.

Customer Service

They appear to have a pretty solid support team, although a few people have had issues with delayed responses.

Looks like they run an active Twitter account, so it shouldn’t be hard to get someone’s attention there.

If you are looking for companies that offer premium, top tier customer service, check out the rankings for the best overall hosting companies.

Reviews

We looked at online review sites to find out what Webstarts customers were saying. We found that many users were happy with its ease of use.

One happy customer states: “I’ve tried a number of website builders and found webstarts to be the best. They’ve got good customer service and I like the drag and drop editor.”

Another reviewer agrees saying: “It helped almost immediately, and it was really easy to create! Their easy to use interface and video tutorials made it easy to make an entire working website in less than a week. Thanks Webstarts.com!”

We also found several negative reviews as well. These users are unhappy with customer support and billing hassles.

One frustrated reviewer writes: “After attempting to cancel my account with webstarts .com , They have not stopped billing my submitted credit card for membership, and they do not reply to any inquiries that I make to them!”

Another customer warns that: “They are not easy to get ahold of, and once you get a real person, they are often rude and usually not helpful; the billing function continues w/o your notification and exact knowledge of what it is for, and its very difficult to resolve billing mistakes.”

Pros

1) Low Prices: Besides the obvious free plan, WebStarts offers plans with low introductory prices, at 50% off of regular prices.

2) Attractive Templates: WebStarts has attractive templates used for both free and paid plans. They are 100% customizable and modern. With higher plans (Pro Plus and Business), the templates can also be optimized for mobile devices.

3) Free Flash: Although Flash is not in vogue anymore, some people still use it and you have access to free Flash animations.

4) Good Knowledgebase: WebStarts’ knowledgebase is fairly extensive with answers to many questions regarding account management, apps, website builder functions, analytics, widgets, and much more.

5) Cancel Anytime: There are no cancellation fees for closing your account early.

Cons

1) Limited Support: There seems to be limited support through a simple form email. There is no ticket system. Phone support is only available for Pro Plus and higher accounts. On the contact page, it mentions “Chat With Us” but there is no chat button.

2) No Uptime Guarantee: WebStarts has no published uptime guarantee.

3) No Money-Back Guarantee: WebStarts doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee. The flipside is that you don’t pay any cancellation fees if you do decide to close your account early. But since the company charges by the year, you wouldn’t get the remaining portion of your money back. The way to mitigate this is to try the free website with no strings attached.

Summary

WebStarts offers the dying breed called a free website, even though it comes with ads and is limited to only 5 pages. Their regular plans have reasonable introductory prices at 50% off.

While there is limited support except for higher-tiered accounts, their knowledge base is pretty solid and should answer most questions. WebStarts obviously aims more toward beginners, with a powerful website builder that has many rich features.

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Siteground offers a variety hosting plans that will appeal to anyone from beginners to established businesses.

These guys are the real deal, which is why they’re currently the #1 overall recommended web hosting company (see the full rankings here).

Visit Siteground.com (60% off)

Siteground was founded in 2004 and ever since has maintained a reputation for quality hosting servers and top-tier customer service.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

Siteground offers some of the best features any hosting site has ever offered.

Here are just a few of them:

1) Optimized Setup for Popular Applications: Almost all web hosting companies support most popular applications like WordPress, Joomla, or Magento. You can install any of those CMS, typically with a one-click installer. But that’s where they stop. Siteground is unique in that they offer special hosting solutions for WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and other popular applications.

These solutions come with Siteground’s proprietary optimized server setup, security, speed systems, free templates, and detailed tutorials. There are multi-tier plans – StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek – to meet any hosting needs, including web space, number of visitors, and application-specific features like caching, staging, and repo creation.

Support is optimized for specific applications. For example, on a WordPress plan, you’ll deal with experts who are knowledgeable in WordPress. Premium support is included with higher plans (GrowBig and GoGeek).

2) Student Hosting: Student web hosting is surprisingly uncommon, which is a shame since everyone knows students can really use discounts. Siteground offers student plans starting at $1.99 a month, which includes all the features of a regular hosting plan excluding free domain.

This robust plan includes 10 GB of storage space, multiple versions of PHP, unlimited traffic, unlimited MySQL databases, automatic daily backups, fast speed, and user-friendly cPanel. This plan is suitable for beginners and advanced users.

Not only that, there is also Faculty Partnership that includes a custom sign-up page for a specific school or course. Best of all, Faculty Partnership is offered for free. The high level of support applies even to these low-priced or free accounts. Everyone has access to the 24/7 support by experts.

3) Unique Account Isolation Technology: Siteground was one of the first web hosting companies to use isolation technology, to isolate each account in its own directory for their shared hosting. They use unique chroot mechanisms to achieve this. The biggest advantage of account isolation is that if there is a single account that’s corrupt or has a major security flaw, other accounts on the same server wouldn’t be affected.

Also, the common problem with a shared hosting plan is that if one account hogs too much resource, it affects the others on the same server. The account isolation technology helps manage server resources more efficiently even on a shared server. If you want maximum security and resources, you’ll always be better off with VPS or dedicated hosting, but since that’s not always affordable, it’s reassuring that Siteground has this isolation technology to ensure one black sheep in the herd doesn’t jeopardize the good accounts.

Customer Support

Siteground is one of the best in the hosting industry, if not the best, in terms of customer service.

They offer in-house chat and ticketing systems for excellent customer communication. Their platform even allows you to work with reps you’ve rated and worked with before (you won’t find that with BlueHost, GoDaddy, or A Small Orange).

Their CEO said himself that their claim to fame has been their customer service, without a doubt (1).

If you really value customer support in a hosting company, it’s hard to beat Siteground.

Reviews

We looked at several different online sources to find honest opinions about Siteground. We found many users had positive things to say about their tech support and quick resolution times.

One happy customer writes: “The service to get things repaired are quick – usually within 1 hour, but generally about 15 minutes for me. Many times the tech team already has an issue discovered and is working on it before I contact them!”

Another reviewer agrees saying: “They boast about a 10 minute response time to their tickets, and that’s no idle boast. The last four tickets I raised were responded to in an average of 8 minutes, and all of them resolved immediately.”

We also found some negative reviews. Users here are upset with the site speeds and service with Cloud hosting.

One frustrated customer writes: “I moved from shared hosting to Cloud hosting, and ever since I started spending more money with them it’s been awful. My sites are slower, they gave me an IP address that was on email blacklists.”

Another reviewer had a similar issue saying: “They advised me to upgrade to their cloud service. Once upgrade the service went from bad to unbelievably bad, they then advised me to downgrade to my original plan, by the time I had done this I had spent over $300 for nothing!”

Pros

1) Uptime Guarantee: Siteground a offers real server uptime guarantee of 99.99%. Their yearly uptime is purported to be 99.996%, while their monthly uptime is 99.999%.

2) Good Support: Siteground is reviewed highly by users on neutral review websites for their outstanding support. They offer the standard 24/7/365 support through phone, chat, and tickets. They claim their phone and chat reply time as “instantly,” while their tickets are initially responded to in 10 minutes.

3) Popular Apps Hosting: Siteground has customized plans for popular apps like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento.

4) Multiple Plans: Siteground offers shared, cloud, and dedicated hosting, with multiple options for each.

5) Highly Rated: Siteground is one of the highest rated web hosting companies for their features and support.

Cons

1) Expensive: While their introductory prices are on par with other companies, their regular pricing can seem steep, especially the GoGeek plan at $29.95 per month on regular pricing.

2) One Website for Lowest Plan: The lowest plan only allows one website on the account, although this is relatively common for lowest-tiered plans on competitors as well.

3) Doesn’t Accept PayPal: Siteground only accepts Visa, MasterCard, and Discover as their payment options.

Summary

Siteground is a good choice for people preferring WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal.

Their pricing isn’t the lowest, but it’s backed by good user reviews and superior support. The glaring disadvantage is that they don’t offer unlimited disk space for shared hosting plans, but it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever need unlimited disk space for any of your websites.

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HostGator offers affordable shared hosting as well as a plethora of other hosting features including VPS and dedicated server options.

They have over 12,000 servers and boast a 90% overall customer satisfaction rate, so they’re definitely doing something right.

Click here to see the #1 rated web hosting

HostGator was founded in 2002 and made their way to the top of the hosting industry, competing with giants like LiquidWeb, InMotion, and GoDaddy.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

HostGator offers a number of unique features that make it such a popular choice for first time website owners and bloggers, along with advanced features and easy scalability for experienced web masters.

Here are just a few features:

1) Eco-Friendly: HostGator is one of the few web hosting companies who is openly dedicated to green energy. It can take a lot of energy to power millions of websites and keep them running, resulting in a larger carbon footprint. HostGator buys servers that are 36% more power efficient. They also invest in wind energy that can help offset server emissions. They purchase certified renewable energy credits (RECs) that are climate-friendly and wind-powered.

All these efforts by HostGator to provide green hosting are equivalent to moving hundreds of cars from American roads or powering hundreds of homes per year. If you or your business is eco-conscience then choosing host gator will keep with your goals and values.

2) Separate Billing Area: Most web hosting companies use the same portal for billing and the control panel. HostGator has intentionally separated the two areas and have a dedicated billing area. This is good for security, because if you ever want someone else (a friend, associate, web developer, etc.) to have access to your control panel, you can do so without compromising your security and exposing your billing information.

The billing area has the standard features you would see, like your billing history, account credits, and areas to manage your payment, subscriptions, and credit cards. However, you might find using separate logins for your billing and control panel a tad bit annoying. HostGator recognized this and recently introduced single sign-on so you can use the same login credential to navigate both areas.

3) CodeGuard: There are many reasons to constantly backup your website, especially if you have content that changes frequently. Backing up can protect you against CMS upgrade woes, like when WordPress releases a new version. But backing up can be a hassle, especially if you’re not technically savvy. Enter CodeGuard.

CodeGuard is an add-on service HostGator customers can purchase for shared hosting packages. This service monitors your website, backs it up daily, and provides you the option to restore a backup to revert to the previous version of your website. After the initial backup, if CodeGuard senses a change in your website’s code, it’ll continuously backup your website automatically. You can also perform backups on-demand in addition to daily backups, depending on the level of plan you purchase.

Customer Support

Pretty good support team offered at HostGator. They are on call 24/7/365 by email and phone, which is helpful and convenient.

Not quite on Siteground‘s level with over-the-top customer service quality, but enough to give them a 90% customer approval rating.

Reviews

We looked at different web hosting review sites to get honest opinions about HostGator. Many users were positive about their features and ease of use.

One happy customer writes: “I chose Hostgator as a beginner. They do have a comprehensive feature list, including the very appealing CodeGuard backup service.”

Another reviewer agrees saying: “The Hostgator Cpanel is full of features. My most favorite feature is the quick install facility that enables anyone even with the minimal skills to install WordPress in a minute.”

Not all reviews were positive. We found some Hostgator users upset at the lack of support and resolution times.

One frustrated reviewer states: “Support is totally non existent. Live chat has never once worked for me despite numerous attempts. The “continue” button just does nothing & after contacting them via opening a ticket I never got a reply.”

Another disappointed customer writes: “They let my server get hacked, I submitted a ticket, and they suspended my sites. I submitted another ticket and haven’t heard back from them in 5 days.”

Pros

1) 24/7/365 Support: HostGator provides around-the-clock support, through phone (toll free and local), live chat, and support ticket system. There is also an extensive knowledge base that answers many questions, organized by different topics. There are also video tutorials better suited for visual learners.

2) Weebly Website Builder: HostGator has partnered with Weebly to provide their website builder. Weebly is known for an easy-to-use interface that’s convenient, but still extensive for a drag-and-drop website builder.

3) Unmetered Disk Space and Bandwidth: There is really no such thing as unlimited disk space and bandwidth. But HostGator does openly state they don’t meter their customers’ disk space or bandwidth, as long as they’re fully compliant with the Terms of Service.

4) 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee: HostGator offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, which is fairly generous compared to the standard 30-day money-back guarantee. Dedicated servers are not eligible for this guarantee though.

5) Uptime Guarantee: HostGator’s uptime guarantee is 99.9%. They provide RSS feed for service status updates. Their facilities are based in Texas, with power backups and constant monitoring to help meet their uptime guarantee.

Cons

1) No Cloud Hosting: HostGator doesn’t have cloud hosting yet; they only have shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated server hosting plans.

2) Tricky Interface: HostGator’s main website can be confusing and requires some digging to find all the available options.

3) Unsecure Email: HostGator doesn’t offer built-in antispam or antivirus features for their email accounts, whereas similar companies have those features by default.

Summary

HostGator is one of the most well-known and popular web hosting companies.

They offer different levels of hosting plans with a separate billing area and unlimited disk space and bandwidth, among other standard features. They’re priced reasonably but lack email security protections.

With a generous 45 day money back guarantee you can check out HostGator to see if they are right for you. However if you are looking for cloud hosting you’ll have to check out other providers.

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osTicket caters to businesses and organizations that need help tracking customer support tickets.

They offer a SupportSystem where you can hire customer service agents who will interact with your customers, answering questions and resolving (unlimited) tickets, starting at $9/mo per agent.

Click here to see the #1 rated web hosting for osTicket

osTicket has pretty much grown in popularity with time.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

osTicket offers some unique features that make it a useful tool for companies that value exceptional customer service.

1) Free Trial: osTicket’s cloud hosted solution is known as SupportSystem. You get a free trial for 30 days while enjoying all the benefits of email and phone support, walk-through session, SSL encryption, scaling and security, managed upgrades and maintenance, and automated backups. You also get configurable attachments, unlimited tickets and unlimited users just like the paid versions. The free trial doesn’t require your credit card to sign up, which is another plus.

After your trial ends, you’ll be asked for your billing information if you wish to continue. The paid version comes with 3 plans: Basic, Standard, and Premium. The 30-day free trial is a good way to gauge which plan you might want to use once you convert to paid. SupportSystem pricing is based per agent (someone who interacts with your customers), and all plans include unlimited number of customers and tickets.

2) Self-Hosted: If you don’t want to go with the paid version of osTicket (SupportSystem), even with the 30-day free trial, you always have to option to self-host osTicket. You need your own web and database server (through another web hosting company like these top ranked ones) and you’ll have to do all the installation, setup, and troubleshooting yourself.

You’ll get no personal support other than what’s in the community forum and wiki, you’ll have to set up your own SSL encryption and email, and you’ll have to deal with backups, maintenance, and security. So why bother self-hosting osTicket on your own platform? The biggest reason is that it’s free. It’s a reasonable option if you’re technically savvy.

3) Openly Developed: osTicket is openly developed on GitHub page. As a user, you can report bugs or visit GitHub to see the latest development. You can also contribute to the internationalization efforts at Crowdin page. osTicket is actively being translated to languages other than English.

Another aspect of osTicket’s open development is their community wiki, as users contribute tips, tricks, troubleshoots, and other information about installing and configuring osTicket. This level of transparency and community involvement ensures that user feedback is taken into account and osTicket is constantly being updated and fine-tuned.

Customer Service

When it comes to customer service at osTicket, you are in great hands. That’s what this company is really all about.

They’ll handle all aspects of the customer service process, from the problem to the solution.

Your customers can send an email to your designated support email address, or call a support phone number and get the help they need.

If you’re going the self-hosted route, just make sure your hosting plan is compatible with MySQL 5.0+ and PHP 5.3+ since osTicket requires installation of both. osTicket is compatible with both Apache and IIS (i.e., Windows-driven) servers.

Reviews

We looked at several online sources to find reviews for osTicket. We found customers love its easy installation and customization.

One happy customer states: “I absolutely love how easy it is to install osTicket and even more importantly, how easy it is for my customers to get in touch with me.”

Another reviewer writes: “osTicket is a free system that is definitely worth trying. The user interface may not be the most beautiful eye-candy piece of software ever made, but that can all be customized as needed.”

We also found a few negative reviews. These osTicket customers are disappointed with feature implementation.

One customer explains that: “It is loaded with features, but sometimes those features are a little cloudy and complication, and there can certainly be times where this becomes frustrating, especially during implementation.”

Another reviewer complains that: “Any features that are not currently implemented into osTicket, I have to code myself, as plugins seem to be slightly lacking.”

Pros

1) Good Documentation: osTicket boasts superior documentation, through community wiki, blog articles, release notes, and support forum. It’s mostly user-contributed so you know the information is current and from the field.

2) Use Your Own Domain: You can use your own domain to brand your support platform. So if you want to download osTicket on MyAwesomeSupport.com, you can do so.

3) Cancel Anytime: If you’re paying for any of the three SupportSystem plans (Basic, Standard, Premium), you can cancel anytime without paying cancellation fees.

4) Affordable Pricing: SupportSystem plans are affordable and can scale based on the number of agents you have. The Basic plan starts at $9 per agent, while the Premium plan is $16 per agent with more robust features.

5) Migration and Integration: You are provided assistance with migration to osTicket from another platform or integrating it with existing business applications.

Cons

1) No Live Chat: There is no live chat help offered with osTicket’s cloud hosted solution, SupportSystem. You only get email and phone support. But because the community wiki is so well-documented, this is probably not a big problem.

2) Not a Lot of Information: Other than their plans and the list of features, there’s not a lot of information on the system itself, but that could be due to the fact that you can download it for free and see it for yourself.

3) Agent-Based Pricing: Agent-based pricing means you’ll pay $9 per agent (in the Basic plan), so as your support team grows, you’ll pay more. That makes sense, but it’d be nice to have a flat-fee option for unlimited number of agents.

Summary

osTicket itself is not a web hosting plan. It’s a free, open-source support ticket program.

You have the option of installing it on your own web server and hosting it yourself, or use the cloud hosting solution called SupportSystem. You can try SupportSystem for 30 days for free to see if you’d rather self-host it. The program is thoroughly documented and there are three paid options. The paid plans use agent-based pricing, so the bigger your support team, the more you pay.

Click here to see the #1 rated web hosting for osTicket

Amazon S3, or Amazon Simple Storage Service, is not your typical hosting solution as it caters specifically to businesses and app developers.

As far as hosting files for a website, you can only host static websites (HTML, CSS, and/or JavaScript) on Amazon S3 and they price their data plans based on the resources you use, per gigabyte.

Click here to see the #1 rated web hosting

Amazon S3 started getting pretty hot back in 2012.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

Amazon S3 has some features that make it one of the more unique hosting solutions out there. Here are a few of them:

1) Scalable After Free Tier: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is initially free, and then it becomes a pay-as-you-go system. On the free tier, you get 5 GB of standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15 GB of data transfer per each month for one year. This free tier expires after the initial year. Afterwards, you only pay for what you use.

Many businesses and individuals enjoy this cost saving solution. You can choose from multiple regions in the U.S. (East and West Coast), EU, Asia Pacific, or South America. Amazon S3 offers three levels of storage classes. Amazon S3 Standard is for general purposes and data that are accessed frequently. Amazon S3 Standard – Infrequent Access (Standard – IA) is for less frequently accessed data. Amazon Glacier is for long-term archive for data that are rarely accessed, but still need to be stored.

2) Host Static Websites: Amazon S3 isn’t exactly a web hosting plan. It’s mostly for storing files. But you can actually host static websites on Amazon S3. What are static websites? Those are websites consisted only of HTML, CSS, and/or JavaScript. There is no dynamic content and no interaction with users. If you want to host server-side scripts like PHP or Rails app, you’d have to look elsewhere.

To host your static websites on Amazon S3, you just need to create a bucket in the management console (similar to a folder), enable the website hosting option, and upload your pages. You can point your own domain or subdomain in your domain’s DNS settings. If you’re mainly experimenting with HTML and don’t want to pay for a full-fledged hosting account, hosting your static websites on Amazon S3 is something you’d want to look into.

3) Simple Monthly Calculator: AWS (Amazon Web Services) has created a JavaScript-based simple monthly calculator to help you figure out your monthly cost. This isn’t terribly useful if you’re a small-time user with just a few files uploaded, but if you’re sharing lots of files that you expect to be downloaded many times, this calculator helps you estimate how much cost you might incur.

Because of the pay-as-you-go nature of Amazon S3, figuring out how much you might owe will prevent any surprises later on. This unique feature will be invaluable to businesses or individuals that need the flexibility of S3 but are also on a tight budget and need some way to plan for usage costs.

Customer Service

Not the best in this category. Support team is only available during certain hours and a lot of reports of slow responses, especially for the free-tier users.

Paid users will get better support, but still, nothing compared to the support teams offered by hosting companies like Siteground and Liquidweb.

Reviews

We looked at several online sources to find out what customers were saying about Amazon S3. We found that customers were positive about the features and site speeds.

One customer happy with speed and value writes: “I really like Amazon S3 because it’s fast, really cheap and has very easy API to work for my projects in every programming language.”

Another reviewer agrees saying: “Amazon S3 is a great hosting service. They are always up, have great speeds, and amazing support. I would recommend it to anyone who needs file hosting of big files.”

Not all reviews were positive however. We found some customers were disappointed with customer support and specific pricing options.

One upset customer writes: “Support is a little slow. I hate their bandwidth pricing. Because when i started getting too much traffic it started taking more money.”

Another frustrated reviewer states: “Customer Support is bad for Free-Tier users & you need to pay to get a prompt response! Although I never had to contact them for S3 until now.”

Pros

1) Uptime Availability: Amazon S3 has a published uptime availability of 99.99% in a given year, making the service highly reliable.

2) Low Cost: The free tier for first 12 months and the pay-as-you-go model make using Amazon S3 extremely low cost for storing large amounts of data. There are no minimum fees or upfront commitments.

3) Secure: Amazon S3 automatically encrypts all your data once it is uploaded, so it can be transferred securely over SSL. You can also configure your own bucket policies and manage permissions, deciding on who gets access to what. You can do this through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

4) Scalable: You can store as much data (including static websites) as you need. You can also decide on the frequency of accessed data, so you can move them to appropriate storage classes (Standard – IA or Glacier) if necessary. You’re in complete control of how much scaling up or down you want to do.

5) Integrated: Amazon S3 works well with other AWS services such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon EMR, and much more.

Cons

1) Support: The support has limited hours.

2) Only for Static Websites: If you’re using Amazon S3 in lieu of a full-fledged web hosting plan, you can only host static websites and not server-side scripts like PHP.

3) Need to Estimate Usage: Estimating your usage, even with a simple calculator, might be a hassle for some people.

Summary

Amazon S3 is primarily a storage platform, but you can use it host your static websites. This option works great if you don’t anticipate a lot of traffic on your website, you don’t update your website a lot, or you have a small, personal website that you don’t want to pay full hosting for (or VPS or dedicated for that matter).

Amazon S3 for hosting static websites has been highly reviewed by other users online; they like the constant availability, speed, and no-to-low cost.

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Omnis Network offers a full array of web services that will appeal to small businesses, personal users and hobbyists alike.

They offer well defined hosting plans but you’ll need to get used to the custom Omnis control panel.

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Omnis was pretty popular back in the day.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

Omnis Network offers some cool features that separate them from their competition (see: HostDime, KnownHost, or iPage).

Here are some of them:

1) Clearance Overstock: Omnis offers what they call Clearance Overstock. They offer previous generation servers at a discounted price. It’s similar to buying a slightly used car. It still functions well but you just pay less for it. All servers feature 24/7/365 technical support, 6 TB data transfer, custom-built premium server hardware, IPv4/29 range, control panel that’s easy to use, real-time bandwidth graphs, power manager (reboot, power on, power off), and web-based reverse DNS manager.

Depending on the options – CPU, memory, HDD – the price of Clearance Overstock servers range from $56 to $132 per month. Compare this to their current servers that they named In-Stock Servers that cost $72 to $156 per month. If you’d like to save a little bit of money by using previous generation servers, Omnis Network gives you that option.

2) Single Plan for Linux or Windows: Omnis places more emphasis on dedicated servers and VPS, but they do offer shared cloud web-hosting plans. There is no haphazard selection of multi-tier plans though. There is only a single plan for each platform: Linux Cloud and Windows Cloud. Linux Cloud is $5.95 per month with unmetered disk space, unmetered bandwidth, and unlimited email.

Windows Cloud is a little bit higher at $7.95 per month with the same features as Linux Cloud. There is no indication that these are introductory prices, which means you’ll pay the same price when the renewal comes up. Both plans include a free domain for a year, 30-day money-back guarantee, free site builder, shared SSL, and more. You have the option of purchasing a premium site builder, dedicated IP, or private SSL.

3) Omnis Network Script Installer: One-click installers of popular applications are not new or unique, but Omnis has their proprietary installers called Omnis Network Script Installer. You can access them through the account manager.

Omnis has handpicked the best software for every purpose – blogging, content management systems, forums, image galleries, ecommerce, and additional scripts. This means you won’t get every app under the sun but only the ones Omnis thought were worthwhile, but the list of available packages is still exhaustive. It is perfect for your personal or business site to get going fast while helping the site look and run at its best.

Customer Service

The customer support team offered by Omnis has a pretty good reputation for being prompt and helpful.

Available via email, live chat, and phone, you shouldn’t have any problems getting ahold of someone and getting your problems resolved.

Reviews

We checked online review sites looking for honest opinions about Omnis Network. We found customers had good things to say about their reliability and customer support.

One customer writes: “Tech support is always reachable and easy to communicate with. And I don’t have to talk to several different support employees to get an answer.”

Another reviewer writes: “Omnis network has been for me very reliable, up to date, efficient, and extremely helpful. In the two years that I have been with them, I can honestly say I don’t recall them ever being down.”

Not all reviews were positive however. We found some customers were upset with resource limitations and server performance.

One frustrated reviewer warns: “Even though they tout that you have access to unlimited bandwidth, storage, emails, etc, when you start increasing your use, they start limiting your resources.”

Another customer complains: “Its almost as if they have servers that need replacement or a lot of maintenance. I’ve also found that they often perform maintenance during business hours (US) instead of in the middle of the night which is dreadful.”

Pros

1) Uptime Guarantee: For shared cloud hosting plans (Linux and Windows), Omnis has a published uptime guarantee of 99.9% on their website.

2) Unlimited Resources: For shared cloud hosting, you get unlimited bandwidth, disk space, and email.

3) Money-Back Guarantee: For shared cloud hosting, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee with the usual fine print – no refunds on domain names or any extras purchased.

4) Free Domain Name: Free domain name is included up to a year.

5) Support: Omnis Network’s support is pretty standard with email, phone support, and live chat. There’s also a usable knowledgebase. There doesn’t seem to be any option to upgrade to VIP or premium support.

Cons

1) Limited Site Builder: The “free” site builder that comes with shared cloud hosting plans is limited to 3 pages, which is paltry. If you want more robust options, you’d have to upgrade to a premium site builder for $7.95 per month for the pro version or $11.95 per month for the ecommerce version.

2) No cPanel or Plesk: There is no mention of the popular cPanel or Plesk, which means you’d have to learn to use Omnis Network’s proprietary control panel.

3) No Extras: There doesn’t seem to be any extras, such as credits towards Google AdWords or Yahoo ads.

Summary

It’s pretty clear Omnis Network’s main target audience is those looking for dedicated servers or VPS. They offer a wide range of options for dedicated servers, including Clearance Overstock for previous generations of servers.

They do have shared web hosting plans (Linux Cloud and Windows Cloud) that are simple but robust in what they offer. No cPanel or Plesk could be troublesome for those who like using these popular control panels. The prices are reasonable for being non-introductory. The site builder is very limited and upgrading to the pro version or ecommerce version can be cost-prohibitive. Their website claims that the host focuses on premier customer service and affordability.

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Verio caters to small businesses or small to mid-sized ecommerce sites with highly scalable hosting solutions.

Hosting catered to small businesses isn’t uncommon (see: A Small Orange or Omnis Network) but Verio has a few unique features that set them apart from their competition.

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Verio used to be pretty popular back in the day.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

Verio offers some very helpful features (offered as upsells in their marketplace) for small business owners looking to jumpstart their online presence.

Here are some of them:

1) LiveChime Intercept Marketing: Verio’s online marketing tools include LiveChime Intercept Marketing. It’s a type of social media marketing tool that’s cloud-based and uses a kind of “listening tool” to find customers whenever they’re talking about certain keywords that pertain to your business. It enables small to medium businesses to find customers that might currently need their services on social media (Facebook, Google+, Twitter).

It’s a way to build qualified leads and put your business in front of potential customers, instead of waiting for them to come to you. Once you find the potential leads, you can interact with them through email, messages, or live chat. Those interactions would be highly targeted and therefore would be more likely to convert into sales. This service will be invaluable to any business looking to save time and make more money. Verio offers LiveChime Intercept Marketing as an add-on service with 5 different pricing plans.

2) Verio Marketplace: Verio Marketplace is a one-stop-shopping place for you to find business solutions. You can research, evaluate, and select tools that will help your business grow and scale. You can evaluate multiple solutions, one of them at no cost. It currently has two offerings, with more to come: Verio Cloud N and Verio Cloud Builder.

Cloud N serves as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); you get to have the flexibility of public cloud service to scale your business without the high maintenance costs. Cloud Builder offers custom prebuilt solutions that are already configured to your needs. This service is free and acts a companion product to Cloud N. These services are perfect for any business either looking to get started online or wanting to expand their online presence.

3) Ecommerce Hosting with ShopSite: Verio places special emphasis on ecommerce by offering separate hosting plans for ecommerce sites. They use ShopSite – a shopping cart software designed specifically for small to medium businesses. ShopSite is easy to learn but still has all the powerful features to run a successful online store. It’s browser-based so there is no software to download or install.

There are three ecommerce hosting plans by Verio: Starter, Manager, and Pro. Starter is aimed at merchants starting out with 15 products or less. Manager is for those that have lots of products and need mobile-ready pages. Pro is the most comprehensive plan with Facebook integration, inventory tracking, digital downloads, and more. ShopSite uses Constant Contact as their email marketing software, so customers will have to set up an account with Constant Contact.

Customer Support

Verio offers an on-call support team but their reputation is questionable.

If you are a small business owner that wants reliable support to help you with issues, you might want to try something with more reliable support like Siteground.

Reviews

We looked over several online reviews to find out what people were saying about Verio. We found customers were pleased with customer support and service.

One happy customer explains: “Verio does still have 100% accessible support in America, and they are quite knowledgeable, with some willing to go out of their way to help educate you.”

Another reviewer writes: “Their service is rock solid, updates are consistent and problem free, and they are very flexible concerning disk quota’s and storage. Although $$$, well worth it.”

Not all reviews were positive however. We found customers disappointed with uptime and billing.

One frustrated reviewer writes: “The system is overly complicated, almost intentionally making it difficult to leave the service. We turned our account off months ago, only to discover it is still on and still billing us.”

Another customer complains that: “The mail servers are down all the time now, the web hosting servers are down at least 5% of the time, which may not sound like a lot, but that is HUGE for web companies that rely on their site to be up 24/7.”

Pros

1) Windows, Linux, Unix Hosting: Verio offers three hosting platforms: Windows, Linux, and Unix. Shared hosting plans are offered in both Windows and Unix. Linux is only offered for VPS and managed dedicated servers.

2) 24/7/365 Support: Verio offers the standard around-the-clock support through live chat and phone number. There is also a knowledgebase and control panel demos. A separate billing platform allows you to still make a payment if you can’t access your account, without having to contact support.

3) No Setup Fees: There are no setup fees for any Verio plans.

4) 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee: Verio offers the industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee with the usual exceptions – no refunds for extras.

5) Uptime Guarantee: Verio publishes a 99.9% uptime guarantee on their website.

Cons

1) Bad Reviews: Verio doesn’t seem to have many favorable reviews online. Complaints seem to generally revolve around their support, or lack thereof. While it’s possible only the most disgruntled customers leave online reviews, the fact that there aren’t that many positive reviews can be startling.

2) Priced High: Verio’s basic web hosting plans seem to be priced higher than competitors. Basic hosting offers 25 pages at $9.95 a month. This could be due to the fact they don’t have introductory prices.

3) No Free Domain: No plans include a free domain.

Summary

Verio has a wide range of options for shared web hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers.

Their products come in three different platforms: Windows, Linux, and Unix. Shared hosting plans are offered on Windows or Unix platforms, while Linux is only offered for VPS and dedicated servers. They also have a special focus on ecommerce websites with three different plans using ShopSite. Support, product offerings, and money-back guarantee all seem standard. Because there are no introductory prices on any of their plans, even the most basic shared hosting plan might seem a bit high.

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HostDime specializes in secure, high-end shared hosting for businesses.

They’re one of the top rated hosting companies when it comes to security, and the plans come with a lot of freebies.

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HostDime isn’t quite as popular as it was ten years ago.

Here is how they’ve trended over the years:

Features

HostDime offers some nice features that web developers will find handy.

Here are just a few of them:

1) cPanel Options: The most popular control panel for developers and webmasters is arguably cPanel. Many hosts offer it with each hosting plan, but some developers and resellers need more licenses to fill the needs of their business. HostDime has become a licensed reseller of the cPanel control panel software and offers it on their site.

cPanel allows webmasters to access FTP files, email, statistics and other features easily and you can purchase an internal license of version 11 for $30/mo or a VPS optimized cPanel for only $13/mo. You can also choose to purchase external licenses in bulk. One VPS optimized cPanel for $15/mo or options for 2-10, 11-19, 20-49 ranging in price from $30.95/mo to 33.95/mo depending on the number you need. The licenses are fully brandable to show your business name when anyone accesses their files. It comes with free installation and a free virus scanner to make sure your hardware is safe.

2) Web Presence Builder: Site builders are an industry standard and are provided by almost every company that sells hosting plans. Most have drag and drop interfaces and templates to get you going fast. Although, most of them lack what is becoming more and more important over time, which is keeping the audience in mind. Parellels Web Presence Builder has an easy to use drag and drop builder and thousands of templates, but the other options set them apart from the normal builders.

To start, Presence offers industry specific templates from over 100 types of businesses. This software is also multilingual to help you if English isn’t your first language. Keeping your audience in mind, your site is easily integrated with social media and every site you build will be optimized for mobile devices. Small businesses will also enjoy the ability to have a shop directly on their site or hooked up to their facebook page. This site builder is one of the most versatile in the hosting world and is perfect for someone who needs a website, but isn’t a programmer.

3) Disaster Recovery: Everyone with a website understands that data can be lost easily in a variety of ways. You may not know that half of all businesses close within two years of a data disaster. Sadly, many users and hosts aren’t proactive enough with their data, but if you wait to react to disasters you may be putting your business in jeopardy. Data disaster recovery is something that HostDime takes seriously by offering plans that are custom made for each plan holder.

By offering specialty backup schedules, redundancy systems, or even choosing a secure data center to prevent the result of man made or natural disasters, HostDime will create a plan that makes sure the files and information on your server is secure. There is no pricing information on the site and anyone interested has to contact the provider directly, but once your data is safe you won’t have to be concerned with potential hacks, disasters, or data loss anymore.

Customer Support

They offer a 24/7 in-house support team, which can be very helpful.

Usually in-house support teams are more organized and offer quicker response rates.

Also it appears they run an active Twitter account, so you shouldn’t have trouble getting their attention if you run into issues.

Reviews

We checked different internet review sites looking for customer opinions of HostDime. We found these users were mostly happy with the wide variety of features available.

One happy customer writes: “They had a lot of features, like auto installer for scripts such as WordPress and alot more such as forum scripts. Also one thing which I liked also is that they had a full featured Cpanel.”

Another reviewer agrees saying: “The offerings with Hostdime, cpanel/whm, ssl services and more are better than reliable. I’ve gotten SSl’s over the years at a more than reasonable rate and Hostdime installs them painlessly for you.”

Not all reviews were positive however. We found some HostDime users disappointed with with customer support and downtime.

One frustrated reviewer explains: “Yeah, the prices are good for what they promise. The only problem is that they don’t deliver the uptime, the tech support, the customer service they promise, so the value is nil.”

Another customer upset with support writes: “When I have had to contact the support desk to find out what to do I have found some of the personnel arrogant, unhelpful, and indirect.”

Pros

1) Fully Managed: All of HostDime’s services are fully managed which means that they set up your site and help you along every step of the way.

2) In-House Support: HostDime claims to focus on customer support by having all of their tech specialists in-house. Support is available 24/7 by phone, email, or online chat.

3) Real-time Updates: Anyone can look on HostDime’s website and see live video feeds of their data center, and they show real-time network and server status updates.

4) Freebies: Your hosting package will come with freebies such as Softaculous, Fantastico, Parallels Web Presence Builder, and CORE Management Portal.

5) Wide Range of Options: HostDime offers six dedicated managed plans, multiple VSP and business hosting plans, and five different SSL options to purchase.

Cons

1) Costly Migration: While migration is free for sites 500MB or less, larger accounts cost extra. The cost varies depending on the size but can reach up to $50.

2) Convoluted Uptime Policy: HostDime does guarantee 99.9% uptime, however if you wish to receive a credit if they fall short of this number, they have a series of hoops you have to jump through.

3) Not for Hobbyists: HostDime caters primarily to businesses and does not offer a low cost basic hosting option.

Summary

If you’re looking for a company that can host your website with excellent service and incredible security, HostDime may be your ideal provider. While it is shared hosting, their resources and data protection make it a better value than most VPS hosts.

Although, if you’re looking for the cheapest hosting out there, this isn’t for you.

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