One.com Pre-Review

Pre-Review: Hosting Website’s policy is not to review hosting companies without trying them out first. However, companies that are on the short-list for trials are going to start being given a pre-review. We feel generally comfortable, based on experience, that we can get to the bottom-line on most companies this way because we know specifically what to look for. However, One.com is a particularly unusual company, which is one thing that drew our interest to them. As such, there will be some things we just cannot know until we begin our trial.  Once testing has completed, this review will be rewritten.

Overview: One.com is an international hosting company headquartered in the United Arab Emirates. You can use them from anywhere, and they are mostly noted for their extremely low pricing.

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.

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Well, I started this with the best of intentions, but after interviewing a representative of One.com, I have decided that I simply can’t do even a proper pre-review of them.  The problem is that they promise what I consider to be impossible–and then tack difficulty onto difficulty by offering impossible at impossible prices. The old adage that “if it sounds too good to be true then it is” has bells and whistles going off in my head like mad.  Here’s a transcript of the interview so you can see where my problem is; by the way, they answered very promptly and there were no delays during the live chat session:

Welcome to the One.com chat support. We are doing our best to answer your queries soon. We kindly ask for your understanding that our answers may be delayed during busy periods.
You are now chatting with ‘Abby’
Abby: Thank you for using One.com 24/7 Interactive Online Support. My name is Abby. How may I assist you?
Paul: Can you host multiple sites on your account or do you require multiple accounts for multiple sites?
Abby: hi
Abby: no sorry we only offer one domain per account
Paul: Do you honestly have essentially unlimited server resources in order to be able to use your allotted bandwidth?
Abby:One.com offers unlimited data movement (Traffic) for all our hosting packages provided it does not violate our Terms of Business. It means you are not allowed to use your webspace for file downloads, file sharing or other activities explained in our Terms of Business.
Paul: So if I have a regular blog that gets 20,000 hits per month, but no file downloads, I can actually do that?
Abby: yes
Paul: Can you install WordPress or do you have to use your native blogging solution?
Abby: yes we offer our blog tool
Abby:even wordpress is supported
Paul:  So how do you handle traffic spikes? Are all sites hosted on a single server or do you use distributed, or grid, computing?
Abby: we offer shared hosting
Paul:  But, and I’m sorry for being slow, I’m a little unclear. What happens if you share a server with a site that has 20,000 hits a day? My 10 hit per day site will slow to a crawl, right?
Abby: no it will not
Abby: we provide enough bandwidth
Abby:to every accoun
Paul: Bandwidth is one thing, but what about server resources. If another customer’s site is accessing my server over and over again, it has to slow down a bit, right?
Abby: no it will not
Paul:  Then are sites partitioned from each other in some way, like with VPS?
Abby: we host many domains on same server
Paul:  Okay, you’ve been very helpful; I just don’t understand how this is technically possible. Do you have a section on your site that has technical information I can look at?
Abby: its setup in way..all of the accounts get enough speed
Abby: no sorry
Paul:  Okay, well, I guess you are priced well enough to get a try, right?
Paul: What does your control panel feature. Can you one-click install software like WordPress or do you need to use FTP for that?
Abby: yes
Abby: no sorry we do not offer one click solution
Abby: yes we offer one ftp account
Paul:  Okay, very good. You’ve been helpful. Thanks.
Abby: Thanks for your time! Feel free to get back to us for further assistance. =)
Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

Well, for $1.45 per month, they are certainly worth a try if you are really looking for cheap hosting.  In the meantime, we’ll start our own experiment in about two weeks.  Who knows?  Maybe they use a sort of back-end distributed process that moves sites around to proper resources, but if they do, they sure aren’t telling.

To check them out, click the banner image below: