StartLogic Review - The Best Web Hosting Solution?
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008Startlogic have plenty of experience under their belts and are one of the largest shared hosting providers around today. They also have a reputation of being the best web hosting solution for many webmasters - but are they or are their better services around these days?
Startlogic are also known under several other guise, namely dot5 hosting and ipowerweb, but unlike Hostmonster and Bluehost who have the same owners but different services the Startlogic group all offer the same as each other. So if have also looked into either dot5 hosting or ipowerweb this review is relevant to you too.
If you want to save yourself the hassle of reading the full review then I will say this - You will not be disappointed with the services provided by Startlogic but it is also worth noting that there are better providers available.
STARTLOGIC FEATURES
Before I mention the main features a great bonus is included with Startlogic and that is free ads for both Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. If these are used correctly they can help you fantastically ( if you know nothing about Adwords and the power of it and if you have a bit of cash spare there is a great guide you can find here ).
You are allowed to host 10 domains on 1 account so for those who have several mini-sites this is certainly a good choice. The space provided and bandwidth allowed is also more than enough for most web site needs.
Startlogic is however in my opinion ( and many webmasters opinion ) severely let down by its choice of control panel. They use vDeck and although this isn’t as bad as some make out it is also fair to say it isn’t a patch on the cPanel control panel used by many others.
STARTLOGIC PERFORMANCE
As usual the so-called 99% uptime guarantee is in place and as usual they don’t quite meet that standard. In the testing period I used uptime was just above 98% which isn’t too bad but the disappointing factor of this was that although other sites when down where never down for more than a few minutes I had one occurrence of downtime which lasted almost 2 hours with Startlogic. That said in general they do deliver a decent enough service.
VALUE
The most popular price package is priced at $5.95, which is more than reasonable but there are packages around for similar prices with better features. However this is still value for money. Windows hosting is a little more expensive.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Live support is on offer 24/7 although you can expect a long waiting time if using the phone option ( you can use online chat). The troubleshooter section of the service however is one of the best I have come across.
STARTLOGIC REVIEW CONCLUSION
If I’m honest I was a little disappointed with Startlogic but I think part of that is because I had been told so many times they where the best web hosting solution you could get. They certainly aren’t poor by any stretch of the imagination but neither are they great which for a company that have so many customers I do find a little disappointing.
Click Here To Visit Startlogic
No RatingHostmonster Review - High Quality Shared Hosting At Its Best?
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008As one of the older statesmen of high quality shared hosting Hostmonster have certainly had enough time to get their service as good as possible, and for the most part they have.
Is Hostmonster the best option for those looking for reliable shared hosting? Well that does slightly depend on what features you want. Hostmonster are definitely good at what they do but the best? Not in my opinion.
You may or may not know that Hostmonster are owned by the same company as another very popular hosting provider called Bluehost. Obviously both offer very similar services but of the two Hostmonster does offer slightly more than its partner in crime. That said I would actually opt for Hostgator over both, however check out the rest of the review and see if Hostmonster sound right for you.
HOSTMONSTER FEATURES
For the low price there is actually a lot included in the packages offered by Hostmonster. First of all they, like all the best host do, use cPanel with Fantastico included meaning you have the best control panel and an abbundance of simple to install scripts such as Wordpress.
You also get unlimited domains and unlimited sub domains for your use to go along with the free domain name they allow you to register. Ruby On Rails, Custom PHP.INI Files,Shell Access and 100 MySQL Databases are just some of the other features included. You also get the option of using PHP4 or PHP5.
There are certainly plenty of features here which should be enough to satisfy the needs of most webmasters.
HOSTMONSTER PERFORMANCE
As is the norm for hosting providers they offer 99.9% Uptime “Guarantee” ( I don’t know why they call it a guarantee as you cannot get a refund if they fail to achieve it!). Like all providers I’ve ever used or tested they fail to live up to this claim but that is nothing too shocking and the 98.8% Uptime I got is not bad by any means.
All their accounts are hosted on Quad Opteron Servers and are backed up with UPS and generators, all of which are monitored 24 hours a day seven days a week. The connection used to all servers is a OC-48 backbone connection
HOSTMONSTER VALUE
Hostmonster offer fairly good value for money, for $6.95 a month ( if paid for 2 years ) or $7.95 a month ( yearly ) you get 2,000 GB bandwidth and 200GB space to go along with all the features I mentioned earlier. This certainly makes for a very affordable high quality shared hosting service.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Not bad - but not the best either. One of the few letdowns I’ve seen is with Hostmonsters customer service. Their knowledge base is fine and they do deal with support tickets fairly quickly but their phone support, although free, could certainly do with some improving especially when other companies have shown it can be done.
HOSTMONSTER REVIEW CONCLUSION
Hostmonster certainly offer a reliable, affordable and high quality shared hosting service that I’m sure you wouldn’t be disappointed with if you decided to use them. Not the best in any area but a front runner in each if you can forgive the slightly shoddy phone service.
Click Here To Visit Hostmonster.com
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