Hostmonster Review
To prepare for this Hostmonster review, we purchased our Hostmonster review account via the Hostmonster web site, the same as any other customer. At no time was Hostmonster aware that we were conducting a review of their services. We believe that this ensures that our review closely matches the experience that a regular customer can expect from Hostmonster.
About Hostmonster
Hostmonster has been providing quality web hosting solutions since 1996, during that time Hostmonster has developed a reputation for delivering reliable, full featured hosting plans at industry leading prices.
Hostmonster's infrastructure is world-class, utilising Quad Opteron servers, providing ample system resources for your sites, full UPS power back-up, with back-up generator, to prevent your web sites going down in the event of a power cut, mirrored storage backups and an OC-48 backbone connection to the Internet that exceeds 2 Gb/second transfer speed.
Plan Features and Pricing
When we decide to add a new web hosting review to this site, one of the first things we have to decide, is exactly which hosting plan to review. However, while doing the preliminary research for this Hostmonster review, we were surprised to discover that Hostmonster only offers the one-shared hosting plan, but what a plan it is!
The Hostmonster plan provides 1500GB of storage space, 15000GB of data transfer/bandwidth and enough features to support everything from a small personal web page to a full-blown E-Commerce web site, all for the one flat fee of $6.95 per month. Hostmonster also include one free domain registration if you pre-pay for 1 or 2 years in advance.
You are not limited to a single site either. You can host an unlimited number of full domains or sub-domains under your Hostmonster plan.
We obviously cannot list all the features included with the Hostmonster plan in the limited space available in this review, but the table below shows just some of the features that make this plan outstanding value. For a full list of the features provided, be sure to checkout the Hostmonster web site.
| Key features of Hostmonster web hosting plan (as reviewed) |
|---|
| 1500GB disk storage space |
| 15000GB per month data transfer / bandwidth |
| Unlimited hosted domains |
| Unlimited sub-domains |
| Free domain name registration |
| Free domain WHOIS privacy |
| Unlimited POP3 & POP3-Secure e-mail accounts |
| Unlimited IMAP & IMAP-Secure e-mail accounts |
| SPAM-Assassin e-mail filtering |
| Easy to use cPanel administration panel |
| Unlimited FTP accounts (with anonymous FTP support) |
| Frontpage 2000 / 2002 / 2003 extensions |
| 100 MySQL databases |
| 100 PostgreSQL databases |
| Fantastico script support |
| Full Shell access via SSH |
| PHP version 4 and 5 (your choice), Perl 5, Python and CGI script support |
| Ruby / Ruby on Rails version 1.1 |
| 99.9% uptime guarantee |
Control Panel
Hostmonster provides the industry standard cPanel control panel for administration of your web sites, so those who have used cPanel before will feel right at home here.
The panel can be configured for a large variety of different languages via a drop-down selection, so those for whom English is not their first language will most likely find their native language supported.
Besides the usual domain and website configuration options, the panel also provides access to a web-based file manager, an FTP manager and an easy to use page wizard, allowing even beginners to create professional looking web pages from a large variety of ready-made templates.
Scripting Support
Fantastico script support is available via the admin panel. For those not familiar with Fantastico, it allows the easy installation and upgrade of dozens of ready-made scripts, such as blogging packages, content management systems, forum software, e-commerce solutions, picture galleries etc.
For those that prefer to install their scripts manually, Hostmonster provides full support for all the major scripting languages, including PHP (4 and 5), Perl, Python, Ruby / Ruby on Rails, CGI and Java-Script.
Shell access (SSH), custom CRON jobs, .htaccess overrides and custom php.ini are also available for the power users out there.
Reliability
As you can probably guess from the infrastructure mentioned at the top of this review, you can expect excellent reliability from Hostmonster. In-fact, Hostmonster have a 99.9% uptime guarantee. We monitored our Hostmonster test site over a period of 3 months and during this time, we experienced absolutely no downtime, you cannot ask for better reliability than that.
Technical Support
If there is one area that can ruin an otherwise good web host, it is technical support, or rather, the lack of technical support. Thankfully, Hostmonster proved to be excellent in this regard.
Hostmonster has on on-line support center, where you can lodge support tickets or search / browse their knowledgebase. The breadth of the information in the knowledgebase often means you can solve your own problems or issues without ever having to lodge a support request.
If you do find you need to lodge a support request, we found the support staff to be prompt at replying and very knowledgeable on the subjects we enquired about.
For customers that prefer phone support, Hostmonster has a technical support phone number that is available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. They also provide another support number for customers outside of the United States.
Conclusion
Hostmonster, in our opinion, is among the very best web hosting solutions currently available. They are solid, reliable, they have a support system that is responsive and knowledgeable, and the standard Hostmonster plan is feature packed and very affordable, what more could anyone want in a host?
| WebHostAnalysis.com Rating For Hostmonster |  |
Click to visit the Hostmonster web site
Before choosing a web host, be sure to read our other Web Hosting Reviews