Hostmonster Review

Hello, and welcome to this Hostmonster web hosting review. In this review I will be taking a look at Hostmonster. Hostmonster was the brain child of Matt Heaton, Matt runs a number of different hosting companies, the companies that I’m aware of are Hostmonster, Bluehost and fast Domain, there may be more out there as well, who knows! In total Matt’s companies (including Hostmonster) now host over 850,000 domains worldwide.

This hostmonster review was actually the very first “review website” that I created but I already have some more reviews in the pipeline, once complete they will be added to the “Web Hosting Reviews” column to the right of the page.

I rate web hosts based on a pre-set criteria, giving them a mark out of 5 for each section. These marks are then added together to give us a final score. The criteria I look at are as follows – price, reliability, control panel, features and support.

I believe that the five criteria above are the most important things to look for not just when looking at Hostmonster, but when reviewing any webhost. You can see my scores for each section to the left of the page. I will now start my Host monster review and explain the reasons behind my scores!

The Price

At the time of writing Hostmonster offers one set package to customers. The price of the package depends on the length of the contract you decide to take out – like most hosts, the longer you sign up for the cheaper your bill will be at the end of the month! You can find a current pricing plan to review below: (Correct at the time of writing!)

It is also worth noting that Hostmonster will supply you with a free domain name if you sign up to their hosting plan. When compared to other web hosts, I usually find that there isn’t much difference when it comes to pricing – almost everyone seems to fall within the same pricing range give or take a couple of dollars. However, not all hosts will offer you a free domain name. A domain name may not cost much nowadays but it’s always nice to get something for free!

I am going to give the Host monster pricing a score of 4/5. I have gone for a 4 instead of the full 5 due to the $30 setup fees charged if you decide to sign up to a short-term contract. This is obviously not an issue if you plan on going for one of the longer-term plans but, if you are looking at a short-term solution, then you may find the $30 setup fee unacceptable. Having said that, if you are looking for a short-term contract, most web hosts will charge you a setup fee (like Hostmonster) or they will charge you a higher monthly rate.

Do also bear in mind that all hosting fees with Hostmonster need to be pre-paid. So if you sign up for 12 months you would pay a lump sum of $95.40 ($7.95 * 12) up front to receive the 12 months service. Unfortunately this now seems to be the normal way for web hosts to work, very few will offer you true “pay monthly” contracts any more so this isn’t specific to Hostmonster.

Hostmonster Review score for Pricing: 4/5

Reliability

An unreliable host can be a massive hindrance. When looking for a web host, one of the things you need to look for is reliability – this is also known as “uptime”. Back when I first started web design in 1997, uptime was a big problem. Technology was still trying to catch up with the .com boom and a lot of my sites frequently appeared “offline” to visitors. Thankfully, this is no longer a problem as hosts now use state of the art data-centres to house their servers. These servers are monitored 24/7 by fully qualified technicians that ensure your site stays online 99.9% of the time (the industry standard).

You will notice that I didn’t say 100% of the time. Even today, no host can claim to have your site online 100% of the time – they can’t account for fires, power cuts, natural disasters and such like. However, the hosts can protect you from hackers, DOS attacks and other forms of abuse that may result in downtime for your website. Hostmonster does this as well as anyone; server hardening has been performed and technicians are always on hand to cope with any problems quickly and efficiently. At the time of writing, my site has been online since early last year without any major outages. I have never noticed the site being down but obviously I don’t sit there hitting my F5 key 24 hours a day!

For the excellent uptime I have experienced whilst using Hostmonster I am going to give it 5/5. This is the highest score I can give and, in my opinion, it is fully justified. My site has been online for the best part of 18 months and I have suffered no downtime and no business has been lost.

*Update April 2009

Since writing the above, my site has been offline on one occasion. This was due to an apache upgrade but no warning was received and the sites were offline for around 24 hours according to visitors. So with that in mind, I’m chaning my score from 5/5 to the 4/5 listed below. I’m not saying that Hostmonster have suddenly become unreliable, far from it, but it was a bit of a headache whilst the apache upgrade was on going, it’s worth noting that since then the uptime has been fine.

Hostmonster Review score for Reliability: 4/5

Control Panel

I often feel that this is one of the most overlooked aspects of any web host. An easy-to-use control panel can save you hours of hard work. There are countless times I have been forced to stumble around a badly-designed control panel looking for features that might not even exist. Thankfully, Host monster uses the “cPanel” control panel. The “cPanel” is my personal favourite control panel, mainly for its pleasant appearance and its layout. Everything that you would possibly need to do can be done from the “cPanel” and can usually be reached within a couple of clicks.

The “cPanel” can be run in a number of different themes or “Skins”. Host monster have decided to use the “XP Revolution” skin. As the name suggests, this is designed to look like Windows XP. Whilst this isn’t my favourite Cpanel skin, it has proved popular with may users.

*Update April 2009

Since writing the above, Hostmonster have moved to the new “cPanel 11″ and no longer use the “XP Revolution” skin.

You can view a screen shot of the Hostmonster cPanel below:

Another great thing about the cPanel is that it is one of the most widely used control panels on the internet. This means if you ever run into any problems or have any questions, then a simple search on google will return hundreds, if not thousands of results. This is a lot better than using a custom control panel that is very hard to navigate and understand. (I’m looking at you 1&1 and Godaddy!)

I am going to give the Hostmonster’s control panel another maximum score of 5/5. Mainly for the reasons I have stated above, when looking for a web host control panel you simply won’t find better than the “cPanel”. As you can probably tell I can’t speak highly enough of the cPanel and I commend Hostmonster for going down this route rather than the custom control panel route like so many hosts seem to do nowadays.

Hostmonster Review score for the Control Panel: 5/5

Features

It’s all well and good having a great pricing plan, control panel and uptime, but none if this matters unless the hosting plan has the features you need. As far as features go, you will find it difficult to top Hostmonster’s package. Here is a breakdown of what I feel are the most important parts of the Host monster package:

• 200 GB Disk Space
• 2,000 GB of Bandwidth (per month!)
• Host unlimited Domains
• Free Domain name
• Fantastico
• 100 MYSQL Databases
• PHP4 and PHP5 Support (You choose)

The first two bullet points are the first things you should look for in a host. This is the amount of disk space and bandwidth you will receive. 200 GB of Disk Space and 2,000 GB of Bandwidth will be more than enough for any website, even one packaged with multimedia files! I run a number of sites on my package and I have never come anywhere near my disk space or bandwidth allowance.

The next thing on the list is the Hostmonster “Deal Clincher” for me. Host monster is one of the only web hosts I have come across that allows you to host an unlimited number of domains. If you have more than one website, then you really need to look at how many domains a host will allow you to run from the one account. As I said, Hostmonster allows you to run an UNLIMITED number of domains on the one hosting account. This means that you will be saving a fortune in extra hosting costs as you will be able to run all of your websites from the one hosting account.

The free domain name feature is one I have already mentioned in the pricing section so I am going to skip that. The next thing on my list is “Fantastico”. Fantastico is a great little add-on that comes with your cPanel and it allows you to install a number of popular web scripts via a simple wizard. So, if you are planning to run a blog, guest-book, helpdesk, image gallery or any other script on your site then Fantastico will be able to do the installation process for you, no messing around with databases or permissions, just follow a simple wizard!

The final two points to review may not be relevant to you, but if you are planning to run a script on your website then the chances are that it will need to use a MYSQL database. Thankfully, Hostmonster provides customers with 100 MYSQL databases with their hosting plan, so you won’t have any problems running your scripts. The final point is also for those of you who wish to run scripts. Some scripts will only run on a certain version of PHP (usually 4 or 5) and Hostmonster actually let’s you choose which version of PHP to run – it is the only host I have come across that gives you such freedom.

With the amount of features offered for this amazing price, I feel that I have no choice but to give Hostmonster another 5/5. There are lots of web hosts out there to review that offer great deals and Hostmonster defiantly falls into that category. You will be hard pressed to find another host that gives you as many features for the small price you pay for the hosting.

Hostmonster Score for Features: 5/5

Support

Last, but not least, I look at the single most important aspect behind any good webhost – the support system! Before you sign up to any web hosting program you should make sure that you know what type of support is available to you and how helpful that support is going to be when you do need to use it. I always send a test email with a general hosting question BEFORE I sign up with anyone – that way you can check too see how fast the response time is and how helpful the support is.

I did this test with Hostmonster and am pleased to say that they passed with flying colours. First of all I emailed them a rather technical question via their helpdesk; I asked them about ION CUBE (a PHP encryptor) and if they allowed you to edit the php.ini files. Within 2 hours my question had been answered by a friendly, competent technician and he even offered to do any ION CUBE installations for me if I had any problems.

I sent my second enquiry to the “affiliate” department. I asked them about the differences between their own in house affiliate program and why they also used Commission Junction. Again, I got a reply within two hours and the response was friendly and efficient.

The email support is great, but there are times when you may need to get in touch with them as a matter of urgency. So it’s important to make sure there is phone support available as well as email. Again, Hostmonster provides you with great toll free phone support. Thus, my advice would be to ‘phone them before joining and ask them a few basic hosting questions, just to see what their response is like! All the contact information is detailed below, so you could even try them out right now!

Toll Free Phone Support – (866) 573-4678
Live Chat and Email Help

To conclude, I am going to give the support for Hostmonster a rating of 5/5. It’s another maximum score but you can’t fault them on their speed, knowledge and friendliness. Just give them a call for yourselves or send them an email and you will see what I mean. You will be amazed at the response time. A lot of other big hosts take up to 48 hours to reply to emails. It’s refreshing to come across a web host that replies to you within a couple of hours. It reminds me of the good ol’ days!

*Update April 2008

As I mentioned earlier, the apache upgrade meant that I needed to contact support. Unfortunatelty a lot of other customers had the same idea so the helpdesk took longer to reply than normal. I did however call the support line via Skype and managed to get through to a “real person” who fixed my problem in less than 10 minutes. However, for the longer than usual helpdesk reply I’m going to take off a point!

Hostmonster rating for Support: 4/5

Conclusion

In closing, I would like to thank you for reading my Hostmonster review, I hope that you have found it helpful and I hope you are now able to make an informed decision about which web host to use. It goes without saying that I would definitely recommend Hostmonster to any of my friends, family or future clients and if you decide to go down that route, I’m sure you will be delighted also. As you can see from the final score below, I was very impressed!

Many thanks for reading this Hostmonster Review, I hope that your quest to find a new web host is a successful one!

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