PowWeb Review

This host is not recommended at this time : (

Please note that PowWeb is not true grid hosting. They are probably closer to shared, but not quite. I just couldn’t decide exactly where to put them, so I included them in both categories.

Please note: if you have been to other website hosting review sites, you should realize that I rate based on personal experience (rather than hosting company marketing) and am usually a tough grader. Please read the review to see the explanations and reasoning behind the ratings.

Hosting Plans and Scalability:
Pricing:
Speed and Uptime:
Bandwidth and Storage:
Power Rating:
Customer Service:
Ease of Use:
Overall:

Hosting Plans and Scalability:  

  Well, it is what it is.  As they say on their site, they have “one plan, one price.”  What this means, since they are set up more like a shared host than a grid host, is that you have no scalability.  If your site is successful, you will have to move to a different hosting company.  What you get is what you get, and they do give you a lot for $3.88 per month (if you pay for two years up front), but if you don’t pay that far ahead, the value drops considerably.

Pricing:  

This will come as a shock to the folks at PowWeb, but I don’t really consider their $3.88 per month for two years up front that great a deal.  First of all, never pay that far in advance if you haven’t used a company and are certain that you will like them and want to stay.  On the other hand, if you are going with PowWeb, you should do the annual pricing plan.  By the time they hit you up with the start-up fee ($30) for the 3 month plan, you are only paying $5.25 less than if you had just paid for the whole year.  For the annual plan, $4.88 is pretty good considering you can host unlimited domains and 75 databases.

Speed and Uptime:  

  PowWeb advertises “Load Balanced Technology,” which they claim spreads the love through distributed computing and keeps your site up and fast.  Unfortunately, in my experience that isn’t quite the case.  I had one site on PowWeb that was so hideously slow that I simply trashed it.  I have another site on PowWeb, which I had set up for people to test, and it is very simple and has zero traffic, and it still hangs up.  You sit there, staring at your screen, wondering wether you’ve lost your Internet connection.  In fact, I’ve decided not to link to the site, after all, for fear that you may go there and catch it during one of its “good” moments and wonder what all the fuss was about.  Trust me.  They are slow.  The sites I’ve had there have never gone down, but they’ve been functionally down at some point every day.

Bandwidth and Storage:  

  Like just about every other shared host, they promise “unlimited” everything.  You should ignore that here as you would anywhere.

Power Rating:  

  A combination of things they are unable to provide.  Hey, the truth hurts.

Customer Service:  

  Here is where PowWeb finally shines.  They are available 24 hours per day by phone or by live chat, and the several times I’ve annoyed them they have been just spectacular. These must be the most long-suffering, bleeding-eared group of support technicians in the world, but at least they give it their best.

Ease of Use:  

  By the way, if you stare at the site long enough, you’ll notice your user name at the top of the page.  That’s the only way to get to the control panel.  But don’t get excited then run off and “one-click” install Wordpress to your root directory because that’s not allowed.  You have to install it to a sub-directory and then do a redirect from there to the root.  If that’s confusing, at least they have good customer service.  They do have automatic back-ups of your files and databases and make this process of securing your site very simple.

Overall:  

  Seriously, don’t, but I still have a site there, and if anything ever seems to improve, I’ll do another review. If for some strange reason you do feel compelled to go with PowWeb, use my link below. At least I’ll get paid while you suffer.