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POWWeb Trial End: Final Review

Paul Zannucci — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:51:45 +0000

Life is harsh, and so am I when you take people’s money and provide garbage in return.

I have just completed my one-year trial of POW Web. The trial included purchasing domains and running three sites on my account, two of which ran on the blog platform wordpress. The busiest site, one of the blogs, ran cron jobs and received a high of 100 unique visitors per day. One site was a message board site that was somewhat under utilized, with the busiest day logging around 50 new comments/threads. I did not attempt any ecommerce, but given my findings from the other sites, this was hardly necessary.

I could do an itemized final review and list what POW Web does well along with what it doesn’t do well, but that would only serve to obscure the most important thing you need to know, which is that running a site on POW Web is a bad thing.

What you quickly discover is that site performance is extraordinarily erratic even with static pages and no traffic. I cannot tell you how many times I was the only person on a site, particularly during setup, when the servers would just spin their wheels trying to deliver a 20kb page. Needless to say, raise the level of processing complexity and add a bit of traffic and you will soon feel as though it is 1995 and you are trying to download a page of high-res photos on a first generation phone modem. Furthermore, sites tended to lose contact with their databases at various times throughout the day.

So in the end, for POW Web the question really doesn’t come down to a matter of checking off a list of positives versus negatives because the simple act of serving up web pages is simply too much for them, and so there you go; the inability to perform the most basic function you need from a web host pretty much rules them out.

I have closed all accounts with this company and would need some very compelling reasons to give them another try. If you are looking for good shared hosting, I would recommend anyone else so long as they are a reputable company with solid business practices. Specifically, though, I would recommend HostGator, my choice for best shared hosting.

Pronet Hosting Review

Paul Zannucci — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:25:41 +0000

Until the end of July 2009, Pronet Hosting is offering a pretty amazing deal. If you click the banner above, you can get a full year of hosting for $4.95.

Consider this a preliminary review. I’ve only been with Pronet Hosting for about a week, as of July 19, 2009, so this review may be subject to change. I sped the process up a little because of the current hosting sale they are running. So far, I’m really surprised at how happy I am with them. I’m not the easiest webmaster to please. However, it should be noted that my test site only has an empty shell, WordPress installation running. Still, I’ve seen some hosting companies who couldn’t even handle that properly.

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:	★★★★½
Bandwidth and Storage:	★★★★☆
Power Rating:	★★★★¼
Customer Service:	★★★☆☆
Ease of Use:	★★★★¾
Overall:	★★★★¼

Hosting Plans and Scalability: ★★★★☆

Pronet Hosting offers both Windows and Linux shared hosting solutions, dedicated servers and a reseller plan. According to the “terms of service,” you aren’t allowed to use “extremely high amount of server resources” or you will be contacted to pay additional fees. To the uninitiated, this probably sounds a little vague and harsh, but while I won’t argue about the vagary, I’ll argue that this is a very positive, and unusually good, response to sites that use too many resources. Many shared hosting companies just shut you down. At Pronet Hosting, they seem willing to work with you. And this creates added scalability. Either you pay more or you can go to their dedicated servers, which are well-managed and reasonably priced. Overall, I would say this is very solid. You have a chance to start on the cheap and move up if you ever need to. Can’t beat that.

Pricing: ★★★★½

If I were only rating their prices as of right now, their pricing can’t be beat. At $4.95 per year for their least expensive plan, you aren’t going to be able to find better than that no matter how hard you try. Once the sale is over, I assume that their pricing will go back to $4.95 for the lowest priced plan, on up to $99 for their dedicated servers. Considering the price to value quotient and class of hosting, I would say that Pronet Hosting offers a very reasonable price.

Speed and Uptime: ★★★★½

I have only been with Pronet for about a week (as of July 19, 2009), so I can’t give any more than the simplest estimate here, but I will say that their servers seem to be well designed and very responsive. I’m running a dynamic WordPress site there and the speed has been consistently exceptional, even when factoring in the very low traffic loads. Some shared hosts start slow, not Pronet. As of yet, my site hasn’t gone down, and they offer a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

Bandwidth and Storage: ★★★★☆

I give them a higher rating than your average shared hosting company because of their seeming willingness to work with you on your server usage and the availability of dedicated servers. Again, I will have to come back and address this issue more knowledgably as I continue to use them.

Power Rating: ★★★★¼

Because of the speed of their servers and the availability of the dedicated servers, Pronet Hosting comes in very well here. The vast majority of websites could not outgrow Pronet Hosting.

Customer Service: ★★★☆☆

I had made a mental note that I was going to give their customer service a 1 star out of 5. After all, you don’t have the option to call them, which will drive some users crazy, but after trying their ticket customer service, I have to say that I was pleased with the result, and that is what is most important.

Essentially, I created a ticket at 4:36 pm on a Sunday afternoon, labeling it as “low priority,” and I recieved a knowledgeable response in under half-an-hour. For me, this kind of customer service is great. I’d rather submit a ticket and get a good response back in half-an-hour than to call a phone number and get someone who is clueless, but you do need to be aware that calling clueless people is not an option with Pronet Hosting.

Ease of Use: ★★★★¾

cPanel with Fantastico De Luxe is as easy as it gets. You can easily install, to the root directory, over 50 popular software platforms, from blogging and forum software to ecommerce and photo gallery solutions. The only thing you don’t get is FTP within the cPanel, but that is easily handled by downloading a free program like Filezilla. If you are going to run your own site, you need to be able to run FTP programs, anyway, and Filezilla makes it easy enough for nearly everyone. They also offer instant backup and restore, which is a great feature, and a number of other nice touches.

Overall: ★★★★¼

I’m shocked, really. I’m such a grumpy hosting user that I was certain this company, because of the cost, would drive me batty. I’ve already, after all, skewered Bluehost and PowWeb. How could I like a much smaller hosting company like Pronet Hosting? Well, they are working hard to create a great solution and seem to be pulling it off, that’s how. Very, very good so far.

You can’t get a better price anywhere. If this honest review was helpful to you and you are interested in more information, please click below to take a look at Pronet Hosting:

Netfirms Review

Paul Zannucci — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:50:52 +0000

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:	★★★½☆
Pricing:	★★★½☆
Speed and Uptime:	★★★½☆
Bandwidth and Storage:	★★★★☆
Power Rating:	★★★½☆
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: ★★★½☆

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: ★★★½☆

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: ★★★½☆

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: ★★★½☆

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:

Host Papa Review

Paul Zannucci — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:26:52 +0000

Overview: Host Papa is a shared host with a single hosting plan, as many companies have gone to these days. Host Papa really does most everything well, but one of the things that really distinguishes it from other hosting companies is that they have gone 100% green.

What I feel is important:

It wears me out ; ) to type this over and over again, but shared hosting does have its limitations. As soon as I get a full-fledged post up about that, I’ll link to it from all the reviews. For now, just know that shared hosting is perfectly fine for 99 percent of all websites. Complex sites or sites with major traffic may have to look to grid or dedicated hosting. This is really the only drawback that I can find with Host Papa.

Cost: You get a free domain for life, which is nice, and free set-up. Charging for set-up can catch a lot of newbies by surprise when they start with a host, so you won’t have to worry about that at Host Papa. Their pricing is very good, but doesn’t allow you to pay monthly, which can cause some people difficulties. The annual rate comes in at $6.95 per month, but if you are willing to go to 3 years, you can get that down to $4.95. They also offer a 30 day guarantee.

Speed and Uptime: Host Papa’s uptime is at 99.99%. That is world-class no matter who they are grouped with. Their SQL servers are responsive and well designed, so sites rarely go through any significant slow time. Host Papa is at or near the top of the class in both speed and uptime, even when compared to much more expensive hosts.

Want to test drive a couple of sites that are hosted by Host Papa? Here is an insanely complex site that is hosted with them: VI VAA. I find it remarkable that that sort of site can operate at all on a shared host, much less be reasonably (sort of) responsive.

For a more realistic test, visit Mafic Studios. Notice how that site, well, signs. You go from page to page without effort. This brings me back to my delayed lecture on shared hosts. With a reasonable site and a good shared host, like Host Papa or Host Gator, you can do a lot and be very happy. Go nuts with a shared host, and you are likely to be disappointed; not because of anything the host is or isn’t doing, but because you are trying to do something unreasonable with what you have bought. A Toyota Camry is a fine car, but don’t try to enter it in the Daytona 500.

Customer Service: Host Papa is also a clear front-runner in customer service. I’ve stated my preference for live chat before, and they have that, but they also have 24/7 email support and telephone support that is 24/7 Monday through Friday and most of the day on Saturday and Sunday. This is another host I’ve never had to call for customer support, so I can’t personally attest to the quality of help you receive, but most customer reviews are favorable.

Ease of Use: Again, Host Papa does it right and one-ups most of their competition. You have cPanel to control your site, which is very easy to use; Fantastico Deluxe to install software with but a click or two; and then they go one better, offering users a very robust web designer program, Soholaunch, which is worth the price of admission by itself.

Going Green: This is important to many people these days, and Host Papa jumped out in front of this problem early. They offer 100% green hosting. Does that mean that if the wind stops blowing your site will crash? Not so much. Let me allow them to explain it to you:

HostPapa has taken the initiative of going green by purchasing 100% green renewable energy to power our data center, web servers, office computers, laptops and office space. These energy sources supply HostPapa’s entire equivalent energy consumption into the power-grid with certified 100% renewable green energy sources, such as wind and solar-powered energy.

How do we do it?
We certainly do not have a wind turbine on the roof of our data center! Sure, it would be a neat thing to have, but that is not the case. After an energy audit by an outside provider to calculate our total electrical energy consumption from traditional sources, HostPapa purchased “green energy tags” or certificates from a certified green energy supplier. That supplier calculates the total energy consumption of our operation and uses their suppliers of green energy to pump in 100% equivalent energy back into the power grid. This effectively cuts down on the carbon dioxide-producing (CO2) energy that we normally would have required from non-green energy sources.

Bottom Line: Host Papa is a great selection for those whose needs match with a shared host and who can afford paying a little in advance. And if you have environmental concerns, they are THE choice as a shared host. Speed, customer service, up-time, easy to use and green. What more do you need to know?

For the best deal at Host Papa, click the banner below:

HostMonster Review

Paul Zannucci — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:42:20 +0000

This host is highly recommended : )

Overview:

HostMonster is a shared-host, like most companies, with a “one-size fits all” philosophy. While that doesn’t necessarily, as we’ve seen, mean that HostMoster will suit your needs (though they will for the vast majority of users), and we do tend to prefer companies that are scalable, HostMoster is still a shared-hosting company that deserves your attention because of their technology, their superior customer service, the ease-of-use and their pricing.

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

Hosting Plans and Scalability: ★☆☆☆☆

It feels harsh and wrong to give HostMonster a 1 out of 5 on anything because they really are a great hosting company, but that’s what you get when you only have one option. Remember, though, that this one plan will be just fine for about 97% or more of the sites on the Internet. The hosting plan comes with all the usual promises of “unlimited” this, “unlimited” that (remember that true “unlimited” doesn’t come from a shared host), but does have a few items that not everyone has. For instance, you get a free domain name, forever, with your hosting. You get up to 100 MySQL databases and PHP5 comes standard. Set-up is also free

Pricing: ★★★★☆

For what you get, which is very strong shared hosting, the pricing is very good. Remember, you can get really cheap shared hosting, but most of the time it will make you wish you were dead. Pay just a tad extra for quality. In fact, if they had a monthly payment option, I would give them at least 4.5 stars, but you can’t pay monthly. The price for one year comes out to $6.95 per month. Two or more years is at $5.95. There are no set up fees, and you get one free domain name.

As I say repeatedly, don’t pay for more than a year if you haven’t used a company before. Pay the $6.95 per month this year, and if things are going great at renewal time, pick two or three years. All major credit cards are accepted.

Speed and Uptime: ★★★★★

Every host will slow down, or even drop off, occasionally, but HostMonster does its best keep things up and moving swiftly, and they are a world-class shared host in this regard. They have customized Apache servers running quad processors, and they have backup generators to insure that they always have the juices flowing.

HostMonster’s up-time hovers near 100%, which is as good as you can ask for. I have, as usual, tested sites on HostMonster and found them to be very responsive, quickly moving from one page to the next. The sites were somewhat complex, and I was amazed at the responsiveness.

Bandwidth and Storage: ★★★☆☆

Sorry, that’s as good as I can do with a shared hosting company with no flexibility, regardless of the promises of “unlimited” bandwidth.

Power Rating: ★★★★☆

Despite being a shared host, which is what most companies are, you get a lot of “power” out of them because of how smoothly their servers run. It is exceedingly unlikely that you will ever feel underpowered at HostMonster.

Customer Service: ★★★★★

Customer service is where they really shine. First of all, the ease-of-use and reliability of their hosting means you may never need customer service at all, but if you do, they are available 24/7 by phone, toll free at that. And this, I think, is important. While I prefer live chat to working over the phone for most of my customer service, most people prefer to talk to a live person. And what if you don’t have free long distance calling? Many web hosts who offer 24/7 phone support don’t offer it toll free. That can cause serious problems for some customers.

But what do you get when you call? You get HostMonster. They don’t outsource their customer service, which means they are more likely to care that you get taken care of. That’s even more important than just being able to call. After all, you want your problem to be solved, not just someone to hear about it. Their customer service agents are extraordinarily knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. I feel very comfortable in recommending them.

One more thing I would like to point out here. It’s not something you would notice if you didn’t look at a lot of hosting ads, as I do, but if you look at the ads for HostMonster at the top and bottom of this page, they actually advertise their annual price instead of the lower, two-year price. That may not mean much to you, but as someone who has used more than twenty hosting companies (and that number grows every week), I appreciate even the most subtle incarnations of honesty, which is all too rare in this business.

These are the good guys.

Ease of Use: ★★★★★

This is anther place where HostMonster can hold their heads high. Customers have access to the intuitive cPanel functionality. Hostmonster also has free installation, one-click, of over 50 popular software programs, from blogging and photo galleries to ecommerce solutions and forums. Have difficulty with FTP programs and uploading to your server? Not with HostMonster, as that functionality is built right into the cPanel. If that isn’t good enough, they provide a free site-builder with templates (I’ve never used it), and free search engine submission.

One of the better things about them is that they monitor the servers 24/7 and even do courtesy site backups. This is great for those of us who are too busy, or too lazy, to always remember to back up our sites.

Overall: ★★★★☆

If you’ve read my other reviews, you know how important I think that scalability is. So you know when I still highly recommend HostMonster that I must really like them. These guys are at or near the top of a very short line of good shared hosting companies in a number of vital areas, and I think they would be an excellent choice for nearly everyone.

If you’ve found this review helpful and want to try HostMonster, please click on the link below. You absolutely cannot get a lower price anywhere.

bluehost Review

Paul Zannucci — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:16:54 +0000

Update (9-15-2010): Just as a reference, I haven’t tested bluehost since 2008. Since the single problem I had with them can’t be replicated easily without artificially stressing their servers (which would be unfair not just to bluehost, but also to anyone else who just happened to be on my server with me), I probably won’t be retesting them, so take this review for what it’s worth. Last I checked, they weren’t bad.

bluehost is one of those one-size-fits-all shared hosting companies like PowWeb, offering a single option for people wanting to use their services. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend bluehost for a single reason, which wasn’t even fully their fault, as you can read below.

The Positives: To be certain, there are some good things about bluehost, and you won’t necessarily be disappointed. They are reasonably priced and have no set-up fees, which often surprise customers of other services. They have cPanel, which provides very easy control over your site(s), with one-click installations, via Fantastico De Luxe, of most of the popular site platforms out there, like blogging, forums, ecommerce, etc. They have a free drag and drop site creator, free FTP right from your panel, unlimited domains and storage and 100 MySQL databases. They have 24/7 customer service available, though from my experiences, you can’t get too technical with them.

The Negatives: I don’t have a site on bluehost for you to test. I used to, and then I got thrown off because my site was getting too many visits every day. Now, that’s going to happen at any shared host, and I could see it coming. You don’t really get unlimited bandwidth anywhere, and you particularly don’t get it from a shared host no matter what they claim. The trick is that you are only getting so much use out of the server you are on, and as soon as you start building up significant site traffic, you run out of space no matter how much of your “unlimited” bandwidth you have used. So my problem wasn’t that I was thrown off. I should have put that site somewhere else to begin with. My problem was how they handled it.

First of all, instead of sending me a warning, they just shut the site down and put up an ugly message that said the site owner should contact the “abuse department,” which probably sent all sorts of strange thoughts through my readers’ heads. I then tried repeatedly to get them to admit to what the problem was. They claimed they had no idea what I was talking about and suggested that my site was simply inefficient. It wasn’t. It was just busy. Had they contacted me and told me that my site was slowing their server down and that I would be given 30 days to move it, that would have been completely understandable. They are a one-trick pony with no scalability. If your site becomes extremely popular, you have to move. But they didn’t handle it that way. They handled it in the worst way possible, simply shutting my site down with no notice, putting an ugly sign up that all my visitors saw and refusing to tell me what the problem was.

And, of course, long before they kicked me off, the site was insufferably slow.

The Bottom Line:The vast majority of website owners will never experience this problem with bluehost because they will never receive significant traffic. That’s just a sad truth. The problem is that most people who set up websites are shooting for significant traffic whether they will ever get it or not. It is okay to start with an inexpensive shared hosting company like bluehost that has no scalability, but you have to be prepared to move if you do succeed. And in the case of bluehost, you have to be prepared to move in a hurry.

GoDaddy Review

Paul Zannucci — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:22:22 +0000

LATEST TESTING UPDATE: 9-15-2010

NOTE: As I’ve said, the point of this site is honest help in an ocean of filled with sharks. I’m not in this to make money or friends. I call them as I see them for the benefit of my readers. All GoDaddy testing has reached a point where I confidently direct readers to look elsewhere regardless of their needs. I have not found anything, after more two years of testing, that GoDaddy does well other than marketing itself. Their Linux servers are a slow. Their “grid” is a ridiculous. Their customer service inadequate, incompetent and, especially with someone who knows what they are doing, rude. And their reseller accounts provide you with an opportunity to pay them good money to attempt to sell their inferior products.

GoDaddy wasn’t always this bad; in fact, they were once pretty darn good. Their transition to offering their mainline customers “grid” service has been, in my opinion, a total failure. But not all is doom and gloom. At least they are nominally honest, only exaggerating their services a significant amount and trying every conceivable method to trick you into purchasing things you don’t want. This is actually more than I can say for a few other “name companies” out there.

~~I’ve since moved on from those free hosting days, but I still have accounts with GoDaddy. Why? Well, there are some great reasons to go with GoDaddy, now more than ever.~~

I still have testing accounts open at GoDaddy. If they ever improve, I’ll let you know.

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 (that also means that if you see a really good rating you know I meant it). 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:	★★½☆☆
Customer Service:	★★★★☆
Ease of Use:	★★★☆☆
Overall:	★★★¾☆

Hosting Plans and Scalability: ★★★☆☆

I always put this rating first because it is so important ~~and GoDaddy has the potential to eventually reach a 5 star here once they finish up the beta of their grid service.~~ Well, GoDaddy did more than finish up their beta, they completely screwed it up, cramming so many accounts onto the same grid that you might as well send your site data via Morris code. Don’t worry, for only $99 a month to start, you can move your terribly performing site to their new cloud hosting. Please note that GoDaddy gets a 4 out of 5 here because that’s an accurate rating for the variability and scalability of their service (though you must scale by your own devices; don’t expect help). This is not in any way an endorsement of how these various options or scalability function, which is poor.

Two other types of hosting they offer are a plan that is specifically designed for WordPress users. From their marketing information: “Harness the combined power of WordPress® and Go Daddy Web Hosting to create your own personal, state-of-the-art Internet blog. The WordPress publishing platform has thousands of free plugins, hundreds of free themes and is completely customizable. WordPress and Go Daddy Web Hosting – the winning combination for your blog.”

~~The other type of plan that they offer is reselling. You can read my review of this here:~~

One other thing of note here, regarding scalability, is that if you end up going to grid computing, you will have to move your site yourself, although I was assured by a customer representative that they will help in the transfer.

Never mind all that other stuff. You don’t need it.

Pricing: ★★★★☆

Pricing is very competitive. You can, of course, get cheaper hosting, but it’s hard to imagine hosting done more cheaply. They offer every domain extension under the sun and usually for very good prices.

Speed and Uptime: ★☆☆☆☆

If I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a thousand times, ALL HOSTS GO DOWN and experience slow times. That is simply the way it is. That said, GoDaddy is very good. I have their uptime at 99.98% for 2009, and their servers are quite fast, pretty much competitive with the few top-of-the-line hosts out there. Their grid service is not as fast as I expect from grid, but that probably has something to do with why it is still in beta stage. GoDaddy, since switching to what should have been a much better “grid” system, is now completely incompetent in this area. I have two test sites running under different accounts and if they weren’t pointless test sites I’d be furious. Databases get randomly disconnected from the servers and both sites, when available, are arguably the slowest I’ve tested. Strangely, the other company I would put in this same, bottom-class level also claims to offer their customers “grid” service, POWWeb.

Bandwidth and Storage: ★★★☆☆

I hate this one because people tend to want to emphasize their “unlimited” packages. Remember that with shared hosting you can’t get “unlimited” bandwidth no matter how many times the hosting companies advertise it. You only get so many resources allocated for your site. On the other hand, there is one rare exception to this rule. With the beta GoDaddy grid, you get unlimited use of resources, unlimited compute cycles. I have to think they’ll limit that once the product goes to its new status. Otherwise, the bandwidth and storage offered by GoDaddy is near the top. And with GoDaddy, it hardly matters how much “bandwidth” you are allotted since 48kb takes about a minute to load. Technically, by their stated limits, GoDaddy should get a 4 here, but since you couldn’t download the stated limits if that was your only goal in life (you’d die of old age first), they lose a point.

Power Rating: ★★½☆☆

I don’t even know what to put here anymore. Any sort of power is only theoretical with them. If you need power, just go to either Media Temple or Ultrahosting, but preferably Media Temple.

Customer Service: ★★★★☆

Customer support is 24/7 by both telephone and email ticket. I’ve called GoDaddy customer support several times, and the wait time has always been minimal, and the people I talk to are friendly and knowledgeable, unless you have a real problem and know more about it than they do. Then you might as well just drive to Arizona and fix their servers yourself. But that’s they way of all hosting companies. On the bright side, I was never transferred around. At one point when I had a site go down for no apparent reason (beta grid), I was placed on hold while my representative conferred with a technician. When the rep came back, he said, “Try it again,” and sure enough it worked. I would give GoDaddy a 5 here except that their customer service line is not toll free. While that has no impact on me because of my cell phone plan, it could cause problems for others.

Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆

Whenever I go around and read about people’s experiences with GoDaddy, there are two things that stand out beyond everything else: One, that they are confusing to use; and two, that they are confusing to use.

There is some truth to this. The last time I signed up a GoDaddy account for a client, which was in April of 2009, I went to the site and registered the requested domain and navigated the ads they throw up for “add-ons” and thought I had declined everything. When I got to the check out page, I was presented with over $3000 in charges–FOR REGISTERING A DOMAIN NAME!

It was easy enough just to deselect all the extras, and I found it pretty funny, actually, but for a new website owner, that would probably be pretty scary. And I do think that the sales process is intentionally tricky, but I think it is probably a little trickier than they imagine that it is. I don’t think they really wanted to trick me into paying $3000 for a domain name.

Once you have properly purchased what you need (and only what you need), users still complain about confusing control panels, but I haven’t seen a problem there. You may have to get used to their set-up, but that is the same with any host. I don’t find their panels difficult at all. To be sure, they are different from everyone else, but you just have to look around a little bit, and you’ll find your way pretty quickly.

Really, they get a bad rep here where I don’t think it is fully deserved. They simply are not that hard to use, and they have plenty of one-click installations of the stuff you are likely wanting to run. If I were rating this just for me, I’d give them 5 out of 5 stars, but since other people seem to find them confusing, I’ll go ahead and hedge downward.

Overall: ★★★¾☆

I think that GoDaddy is a host that I would recommend for pretty much any of their hosting plans, from shared and reseller to grid and dedicated. And if you are looking to host one site (for the time being) that needs a lot of power, I would make GoDaddy’s grid service your top selection. In any event, the incredible ability to scale your hosting to almost any need you could ever imagine having makes GoDaddy a very smart choice.

Only use GoDaddy if you’re into bondage. Now I have to go back and fix every post I’ve ever mentioned them in. Someone kill me.

Was this review helpful for you? Are you crazy enough to still want to give them a try? You can’t get GoDaddy any cheaper anywhere else, so if you decide to check them out, please follow the link below:

PowWeb Review

Paul Zannucci — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:21:18 +0000

This host is not recommended at this time : (

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.

Hosting Plans and Scalability:	★☆☆☆☆
Pricing:	★★★☆☆
Speed and Uptime:	★★☆☆☆
Bandwidth and Storage:	★★★☆☆
Power Rating:	★★☆☆☆
Customer Service:	★★★★½
Ease of Use:	★★☆☆☆
Overall:	★★★½☆

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: ★★★★½

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: ★★★½☆

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.