web hosting service

Hostmonster Overview 

Hostmonster has been providing web hosting services to businesses and personal web sites since 1996. This puts Hostmonster up there with the longer running web hosting providers which should mean they are not going to disappear overnight and take your valued web sites with them. 
 

Hostmonster Datacenter 

Hostmonster uses the latest technology in hosting and uses high performance Quad AMD Opteron Servers for serving your web sites, UPS Power Back-up/ Back-up Generator for keeping your servers online in the event of a power cut, as well as mirrored storage backups, this allows your sites to be served quickly and reliably. 

Hostmonster’s $5.95 Per Month Plan 

Currently they are offering astounding value for your $5.95 per month (24 month signup), their plan includes 300 GB of storage space, 3,000 GB of data transfer per month, this amount of storage and transfer puts their plan up there with the most valuable plans going in the sub $10 per month price bracket. 
 

Other standout features provided with the Hostmonster plan

Hostmonster Control Panel & Scripting Support

Hostmonster utilize cPanel, just as many other hosts. Over the years cPanel has proven itself to be user-friendly, and an easily configurable control panel, for this reason cPanel has become the market leader in hosting control panels. There are literally hundreds of articles available on its usage, this makes cPanel very easy to learn for customers that are new to web hosting.

Typical of most cPanel hosts, Hostmonster supports addon domains, and currently Hostmonster supports UNLIMITED addon domains. During our testing, adding multiple domains was very simple, and worked as expected and without fault. Initially Hostmonster do not offer SSH (shell access), but this can be enabled if you upload a copy of your photo id via the control panel, or fax a copy of your photo id, such as a driver’s license to Hostmonster. Since cPanel also includes Fantastico, installation of many popular scripts is made simple, requiring little in the way of user input during configuration. 
 

Customer Support 

Hostmonster offers excellent customer support. They provide a help center that is accessible from their home page. Answers to common questions can be found here. If a customer still requires support, they may submit a support ticket. In addition they also provide a toll free telephone support service. Support is available 24/7 to help you whenever the need arises. In our experience with Hostmonster support, they have always been courteous, and responded to any issues quickly. 

Conclusion 

We recommend Hostmonster to anyone looking for an affordable web hosting solution that is feature rich and reliable. Their hosting package is excellent value for money at only $5.95 and stands out as one of the best shared hosting packages available. Providing 300 GB of storage, and 3,000 GB of bandwidth allows you to create a large web site without the worry of running out of room any time soon.  

Hostmonster technical support have proven themselves knowledgeable and a joy to deal with, Hostmonster support was only too happy answer all of questions in a timely manner. As a result, we recommend Hostmonster without any hesitation. 
 

Webhost-Advisor’s Rating

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HostMonster is a hosting company that was founded more than ten years ago–in 1996. The company says they host more than 100,000 domains. They are a reputable company that isn’t going anywhere. HostMonster is actually owned by BlueHost, a large web hosting company which we reviewed a few months ago here at Clickfire.

As is often the case with web hosting companies that are owned by larger companies, the product and service offerings are nearly identical. Like BlueHost, HostMonster only offers one plan. Except for some minor differences with the number of databases and email accounts offered, the plan at BlueHost and at HostMonster are virtually the same. The features offered are also the same and actually listed in the same order on the two web sites.

The control panels offered by the two companies vary only slightly. The BlueHost control panel has a more standard cPanel skin with only minor edits/changes. The HostMonster control panel looks different than the traditional cPanel X theme, but has all of the same features. Everything to manage email accounts, subdomains, databases, etc. is there and works as expected.

At HostMonster, you get 300 GB of space and 3,000 GB of bandwidth for about $7.95 a month if you pay yearly. The pricing is hidden well within the signup form. If you want to signup for the minimum period (3 months), it is $7.95 a month and a $30 setup fee. Pricing goes down to $5.95 if you choose to pay 24 months in advance.

As far as incentives to signup go, HostMonster is not bad. They offer a sitebuilder, $50 in free ad credits from Yahoo, and a free domain name if you pay 12 or 24 months in advance. The company will not move your site for free, which is very disappointing.

Support at the two companies is also very similar. Like BlueHost, HostMonster requires you to submit your ticket using the company’s web based interface and also has many departments listed. I tried to submit a ticket, but it kept saying my domain and password were not valid. Needless to say, that was quite frustrating. I even found out that BlueHost and HosterMonster even have the same hold music.

A call to their support department was answered within about 3 minutes after dialing. The representative seemed friendly enough, but I did have to spell my domain name three times. Apparently, to submit a ticket, you have to register with their ticket system as well. This was an annoying process that took a good ten minutes. When I asked my actual question, he asked for my domain name again. I had to kindly remind him I already spelt it out three times two minutes before.

Later, when I went to login to Squirrel Mail, the interface was in Japanese. Since I still couldn’t submit a ticket online and had given up on that process, I called again. I was connected within about 5 minutes. The guy who picked up got the language changed to English fairly quickly, but seemed like a drone. “Domain please”, “Hold on please”, “It’s fixed”, and “You’re welcome” were basically the only words spoken throughout the whole call, which lasted about 10 minutes.

In researching HostMonster, I saw several complaints about spotty and sometimes unreliable FTP connections. Other customers also had problems running scripts on HostMonster’s servers. During my testing, the FTP seemed okay. I was able to install WordPress and a CMS without any trouble.

All and all, I wasn’t that impressed by HostMonster. It seems like the company is neglected. You basically get a lot of space and bandwidth and that’s it. If you are looking for an “upload and forget about it” host, HostMonster will work out just fine. If you want or require more, I’d suggest staying clear.

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR HostMonster.COM NOW.

We have tested the service and know the owners of HostMonster. They are one of the truely great companies that we have had the pleasure of dealing with. HostMonster provides users with fanatic support for a affordable price, a huge feature list, and a reliability rateing truly above the rest. HostMonster utilizes Quad Opteron web servers with UPS backups and a backup generator. In addition to the power backup HostMonster also has 24/7 monitoring and Mirrored Storage Backups. Located in Orem, Utah. They have won many awards for their service from some highly distinguished analysts in the web hosting industry, and will no doubt continue to.

HostMonster Reliability

HostMonster provides powerful and reliable website hosting solutions. They custom builds their own servers, using quad processor Opterons, eight gigabytes of RAM, and Raid 5 arrays. One thing we know is that they are so concerned about the customer being satisfied that they will never oversell a server. They are situated on an OC48 fiber optic connection and have the capability of up to 2.5 Gigabits per second.

HostMonster Price - $4.95 / Month!!

HostMonster provides reliable hosting solutions at very affordable prices. Their plan includes a huge amount ofdisk space (currently 200 GB ) and high monthly transfer allowance (Currently 2000 GB ), a free domain name for life, free setup, free domain privacy registration (an $8.95 value), a free web site builder and many more great features. HostMonster also lets you host an unlimited number of domains on 1 account for free. This is backed by a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee andombined with 24 hour fanatical technical and customer support with an average waiting time of no more than two minutes or less makes them a great choice for personal or business class web hosting solutions.

HostMonster Control Panel

HostMonster utilizes CPanel, which is a very widely used control panel. HostMomster has customized CPanel’s interface to allow for better useability. They include a long list of additional features that the industry’s other leaders currently do not offer. In addition, they offer a free demo of CPanel on their website.

Hostmonster Support

HostMonster’s 24×7 customer and technical support department is from the best in the industry with an average waiting time of two minutes or less. Their staff is friendly and very knowledgeable