Web Hosting Company: HostMonster
Web hosting features and remarks: Considering its price, they offer a good, balanced and transparent web hosting package. And they constantly update their only hosting package by increasing disk space and monthly bandwidth.
There is one hosting company that we don't introduce here. bluehost is another popular web hosting company. In fact, they are twin brothers. They are located in the same building. You even sometimes receive a support message from a bluehost technician.
 |
|
 |
|
Just like other hosting companies, HostMonster has trouble communicating with their customers. Especially, their Livechat function is horrible. First, you waste your 20 minutes waiting in line. Then the livechat program can become inoperable with or without your notice after some 20 minutes or so. And there are occasions when HostMonster never bothers to answer your question after you post one at Help Desk. We reported that HostMonster's system may not accept attachment encoders for Mac OS. After a few months, we asked if they found out anything. And we've been ignored since. On the other hand, we asked a technical question concerning WordPress 2.0.2 and MySQL 4.1.14. And they did get back to us within a few hours with a solution, which really saved us from hell. |
Another
noticeable thing about the overall performance of HostMonster's web hosting solution is its relatively low data transfer speeds. While one web hosting provider offers an average of 480 Kbps for downloading and uploading, HostMonster's data transfer rates are around 170 Kbps.
The biggest problem facing HostMonster's hosting service is frequent downtimes. A website can go offline or become inaccessible every other several days. Sometimes, several times within the same day. That can extremely frustrate you if you update your website hour by hour. If you update your website by uploading large files frequently, HostMonster is likely to move your account from one server to another. And your website becomes inaccessible during the switch.
Furthermore, while other web hosting providers may make a good income by offering additional features or more capacity, HostMonster simply has no addional add-ons. So even if you wanted to increase your disk space or bandwidth, you wouldn't get them.
 |
|
 |
|
HostMonster's support was relatively acceptable but became a lot worse when they supported its livechat system during the 2nd half of 2006. Because of the introduction of this livechat system, an average response time dropped from around 1 to 2 days to about 5 days. As mentioned above, the Java-enabled livechat program can become inoperatable after 20 or 30 minutes. If you want to use a ticket system to report that your website has become inaccesible, they won't respond fast enough. What has so common at HostMonster is that they often reply by simply mentioning a link to their online knowledgebase, which doesn't help a all. After you wait for several days, they simply repeat your question without answering to ultimately waste your time. This is also a common practice.
So what's the bottom line? Get the hell out of HostMonster while you can. It's not worth staying at a hosting company that regularly ignores customers' questions. Yes. We did get out after some 9 months. When our websites became inaccesible for a few hours two days in a row and then they replied to our request to restore them with a silly answer after another. We thought we had enough. On the other hand, you may find out that HostMonster is the best place to run your website. You never know. At least, HostMonster has one of the best web hosting packages. |
Updates
January 11, 2007, the disk space and bandwidth have both increased.
HostMonster has recently launch online support forums. HostMonster also offers technical support with a livechat function, which occasionally disfunctional.
April 27, 2007: HostMonter increases disk space and bandwith to 300 GB and 3 TB, respectively.
Hosting Plans and Main Features (Last updated: September 17, 2008):
- Free domain name (for annual sign-up)
- Annual fee: $6.95 x 12 months = $83.40
- Disk space: Unlimited (was 1,500 GB)
- Bandwidth: Unlimited (was 15,000 MB)
- No. of MySQL databases: 100
- No. of Subdomains: Unlimited
- Domain aliases: Unlimited
- No. of e-mail accounts: Unlimited
- Control panel Cpanel: XP Evolution 10.8.1 Release 113
- Statistical analysis: AWStats, Webalizer
- PHP version: 4.4.1 or 5.04
- MySQL version: 4.1.18
- PERL version: 5.8.7
- System: Linux server, Apache 1.3.34
- Online support forums: Available (unofficial)
- Online chat for technical assistance: Available
- Adult content: Not Allowed
- You cannot increase disk space or data bandwidth.
- $50 Yahoo Search Engine Marketing (Overture) credit for new Sponsored Search advertisers
- $50 Google credit for advertisers
Video tour
This video gives you a quick tour over HostMonster's control panel XP Evolution. |
|
|
 |
More Information
| Click on the button to post a comment/question |
 |
|
