Netfirms Review

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 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:

Pleast Note #2:  So much has changed recently at Netfirms that I’m no longer completely comfortable with this review because I don’t have a current account with them.  I will have to try them out again, but I don’t have a timetable for this.  I am working with their general manager to get more specific information on how their grid works and will update on that soon. 

Cick Here to Read my Q/A with Dan Kershaw of Netfirms

Overview:  Netfirms is a shared and grid website hosting company.  I hang out with site owners all the time and no company has as wide a range of opinions about them as Netfirms. From “the last and only host you’ll ever need” to “the most oversold host on the Internet,” the spectrum of opinions is wide and contradictory.  The reality, of course, is somewhere in between and is based upon user expectations going in.  Netfirms is not a super-fast grid host.  The reality is that Netfirms is actually a good, mid-power choice. 

Hosting Plans and Scalability:  

Netfirms has three hosting plans. Ignore the cheapest one (Plus), the $4.99 per month shared plan, if all you think you will ever need is shared hosting.  If $4.99 is the price range you are looking for, go somewhere that does the low-end hosting a little better, like US Hosts.  However, if you are just starting out and don’t need more than shared hosting for a time, then this plan gives Netfirms some decent scalability.  You can start here and then move up to the grid hosting when you need it.  For new sites, that is usually a prudent plan.

The next step up is where Netfirms begins earning their pay. The “Advantage” plan includes grid service (a very good thing) and 2000 GB of transfer, more than almost anyone will ever need.  You get 2 free domain names and a variety of nice extras, plus up to 30 MySQL databases.  If I were starting one of my notoriously hair-brained projects at Netfirms today, this is the plan I would choose. 

The biggest grid plan, netfirms business, I would ignore initially unless you are looking to transfer existing business to them and already know that you will need more than 2 TB of transfer.  However, I’m not sure I would do that.  Netfirms business plan, at $14.99 per month, is great as added scalability to sites already hosted by Netfirms, but sites that need that much power to begin with may be better served going to a power host.  This is merely speculation, however, as I’ve never used 2 TB of transfer. 

They also have “clustered” enterprise plans that start at $49.95 per month.  This is where we begin to get a little cloudy and into the problems that people talk about regarding Netfirms.  I’ve never used their enterprise plans, but from reading through them, one thing is abundantly clear.  The purpose of the enterprise plans is not to give you more transfer, which is actually lower on these plans, but more power and speed.  This is where you begin to realize that Netfirms grid isn’t what you would normally expect. 

Pricing:  

  This is a “for what you get” sort of deal: pricing compared to similar service elsewhere.  Pricing is good, considering netfirms to be a grid host, so long as you don’t mind paying for 1 or 2 years at once. Monthly payments are not an option. The cost per month for the Advantage plan comes out to $9.95 for one year plus a set-up fee that brings you to $119.40 to get started. If you are willing to pay for 2 years up front (I really wouldn’t pay that far in advance unless you’ve used them before and know you are going to like them), the monthly price drops to $8.95 and your total start-up costs go to $214.80. They offer a 30 day, money-back guarantee. With the Advantage plan, you get 2 free domain names.

Speed and Uptime:  

  This is where the arguments among website owners begin.  You don’t get the consistent speed you would normally expect from a grid host.  I don’t know why this is.  What you do get is a strange sort of performance that isn’t always related to your site’s complexity or traffic.  If you are reasonably pleased with how your site loads when no one is there, then you should also be reasonably pleased when you get a few hits.  To me it was fine; for others, it wasn’t.  I think it depends upon your expectations going in.  You aren’t getting world-class grid for $10 per month.  You are getting, well, starter-grid.  It’s kind of like the difference between a Ford Focus and a Ford Mustang.  They are both reliable and okay cars, but if you get into the Focus and punch the gas pedal expecting Mustang performance, you are going to be very disappointed.  I got into netfirms expecting Focus performance and got what I expected.

As for reliability, they are right up there, nearing 100%.  I’ve clocked it at 99.98 percent.

Bandwidth and Storage:  

They don’t do “unlimited” bandwidth and storage, which is a good thing. Those companies that promise such things know that they can’t come close to delivering on those promises. Instead, the Advantage plan offers 250 GB of space and 2000 GB of transfer. That’s very good, and you may be able to get closer to actually using it here, rather than at standard, shared hosting companies. Here is the problem, though. I have tried repeatedly to pin netfirms down on how many compute cycles or CPU usage that you have, which will be the determining factor on how much bandwidth you can use, and they are unable to give me an answer. That’s not good.

Power Rating:  

  This factor combines speed and uptime with bandwidth and storage.  The highest a shared host can receive is a 3.  Per their marketing material, you would expect netfirms to get a great score here, but I cannot get any solid answers from netfirms on how they regulate compute cycles, which leaves me speculating that they are very close to shared hosting here.

Customer Service:  

  They have live-chat for sales customer service, though it is next to useless. The sales reps have no idea about the products they are charged with selling.  In theory, they have telephone support for existing customers. Twice I tried to call their 24/7 toll free customer support line and just gave up, hanging up the phone in frustration after what seemed to be a wait without end.  There was a message up at the site that they were upgrading their phone service in order to provide faster support. I have not tried to call in since then, so I don’t know if they have improved or not. You do have the option of email support, which might be okay.   Some day I’ll try to call them and see if they’ve improved.  I don’t know what I’ll ask since I don’t have an account there anymore; maybe, “Do you you have Prince Albert in a can?”

Ease of Use:  

 Unfortunately for me, they have upgraded their control panel since I used them, so I can’t speak with great accuracy here.  I will say that they were pretty easy to use before, and I doubt that they’ve made it more difficult.  They do have installation programs for things like Wordpress, but their list of software installs is not nearly as robust as it is most places.

Overall and Bottom Line:  

This sounds like a less than positive review, but there is a market out there for netfirms, in my opinion.  I would recommend, with a reasonable level of confidence, netfirms for a single scenario, but that scenario probably fits a lot of people.  You have one or more sites, business or otherwise, and they have outgrown shared hosting, and you don’t want to pay $20 per month or more for top-tier hosting.    For example, say that you have a blog that doesn’t earn money (as most don’t), and you are getting into trouble with your shared host because you are getting too much traffic.  For that person, this would be a good place.  You’ll get a bit of added power without forking out a ton of money.  The price is going to be similar to shared hosting, but now your traffic concerns are reduced.  Netfirms offers a great mid-range solution.

 
Click the banner for the best prices from netfirms: