When a user got his web hosting account with PHP and mySQL support, then he/she can easily do free programming and scripts so as to enjoy the benefit of their powerful combined capabilities.

Generally all the web hosting providers either paid or free always add some free pre-installed scripts to their customers in the way of guest books, counters and calendars. The users who are searching around can find out the toys and bells and whistles that they can install on their web pages including hundreds of scripts and applications. The user can set up one of dozens of forums, which they can choose from many image galleries and photo albums, and also can serve classified ads, offering auction listings and dating services – in brief just about everything the user can do on the Internet, and also about what he/she can do with a free PHP script from his/her web hosting provider.

There are many free services but one of the best free services to look for is Fantastico, which is a web-based script installer that allows user to add any of dozens of free goodies to his/her web site and that is just by a click of a mouse. If the web hosting provider offers Fantastico with its hosting accounts, user can get access to over a dozen different content management systems, half a dozen user forums, several different blog packages, shopping carts, including Zen Cart and OS Commerce, an easy FAQ maker and six different customer support options so as to enable user to offer help and support on his/her web site.

Two of the handiest types of free tools that many web hosting companies offer for free are:

Portals and Content Management Systems

They make easy for the user to add and remove pages and information to and from their web site. Most of them include modules that allows user to add discussion boards, shopping carts, polls and instant messaging, as well as user authentication and security to his/her web site easily. Mambo, Post-Nuke, Xoops and Drupal are among the content management systems that webhosting company are offering for free. All are open source software with a lot of user support beyond the support offered by user?s web hosting company. Thus there are always new modules and new tricks being offered for all of them.

Blogs

Blogs are online publishing tools by which the user can easily update their website whenever he/she wants. They automatically put the latest entries up and move older entries down in the reading queue. WordPress is one of the most commonly used, which many web hosting providers include as a free setup script with users web hosting account. Thus one should always try to avail all the perks being offered by the web host providers.

No doubt, there are several free web hosting accounts that are free to use, but they will cost the user a lot of money, time, and customers as well as if he/she possess a site that is meant for work related to business and is more than the simplest site possible. One should throw light on the following things to know why free web hosting might cost him/her more than what he/she had bargained at the time of signing up.

Thought no. 1 Bandwidth

Often, one can say that free web hosting providers offers the user little bandwidth which denotes that it will take longer for his/her page to load. If a page takes more than 10 seconds to load then the user will lose visitors because they will just move on. Due to this reason, one might lose a lot of customers and sales from his/her facility of free web host.

Thought no. 2 Advertising

It is a universal consideration that many free web hosting companies are ?free? to the user, yet, the user will have advertising posted on his/her website in addition to pop up ads. Several people do not like such thing and avoid visiting user?s site due to this reason. One should be careful about signing up with a free web hosting company that use to advertise. It probably may not bother the user in the beginning, but it will perhaps affect his/her traffic and sales.

Thought no. 3 Web Capacity

By considering that, web host is free; one cannot desire for an ample of web space. Often people do not get the space they require to upload their web page and which include all of their information. The user should confirm that there is sufficient amount of space available from his/her free web space provider and it should properly match with the required elements of the user?s web pages.

Thought no. 4 Reliability

Another point to consider while selecting free web hosting is reliability. Often time?s limitations are put on one?s traffic flow and if one exceeds this, his/her site may be disabled for a period of time or one may even receive a bill. Thus one should find out what the rules for traffic and what can be the consequences if one exceeds his/her limit.

Thought no. 5 Limitations

In most of the cases, one?s free web host will have rules regarding the size of photos, its upload, icons etc. One should check in advance these things before signing up the contract as if this facility is not available then one is not in a position to upload his/her own photos and then he/she has to check for any other host. .

While talking technically, free web hosting is free but in reality it indirectly costs much especially in the long run because it limits activity and business from occurring at the rate set by consumers. Due to this if one?s business is growing and his/her site is experiencing big traffic then free web hosting is really going be an expensive affair. Thus instead of getting in trouble afterwards its better to check in advance if a free server will really be worthwhile and thereafter one should make a plan for change and growth ahead of time as everyone works with a desire to grow.

“Of course there is an up side to going with a free web hosting service. The obvious is it?s free. There will never be fee for your domain name. Unfortunately that?s about the only up side I can see.
The main downside to selecting a free web hosting service is the advertisements and pop-ups that are non stop. Also you URL will have their company name in it, for example username. freeserversz. com.
Free web hosting services usually allow a lower bandwidth then paid hosts. Sometimes free web hosting sites have been known to change their terms & conditions, or even cancel their free hosts and force you to either pay them or lose your site. In essence, the free host controls everything you and your website does, and this isn?t good. If you ever want to monetize your site in the future, you?ll be severely limited with what you can do. How can you monetize your site if you don?t control it?
If you are planning on using your website as a person site for family and friends, then a free web hosting is sufficient. However if you are using your website for business purposes, then like mentioned before it is highly recommended you invest in a paid web hosting service.
There is only one downside to paid hosting, they cost you money. However there are many upsides included in this investment. With paid hosting you host your own domain, so if you change the web hosting service in the future you can easily transfer the domain to your new provider with out any loss of traffic.
Paid hosting services usually offer 24/7 customer support through email, live-chat, or toll-free phone support. With paid hosting you are generally offered enough disk space and bandwidth. The internet offers free PHP scripts that you can download and easily use, even if you aren?t a computer programmer.

1. The consistency of the service:

First of all think of a brand new hosting company which show off several features, dream of every user but alas! It doesn?t survive for too long. Let’s complete it with an example there is a company offering 500MB of storage capacity, 10GB of bandwidth a month, domain hosting, unlimited domain parking, CPanel along with all possible features, entirely no ads, and this merely for 150 posts in their forum. Outstanding as a dream? But after making few bucks they simply went offline. No declaration in advance, no regret, not anything!

Factors to be kept in mind:

1. Design:

A decent layout is quite important for the consideration. One should verify that the host to whom he/she is going to deal with possess a professional site or just a free template site, which is probably just a waste of time, nothing else.

What is their experience in this sector? It doesn?t mean that new sprung hosting services are worthless, but at least two months experience is quite essential.

One should also enquire about their Google PR, ranking, other locations etc. If the concern site possesses numerous inbound links, the host will have a good budget to maintain his/her client?s site.

2. Advertisements

One should also check for the ads that are placed on one?s space by his/her free web host. It is really annoying to display someone else’s ads on one?s page and it is in real sense the price user has to pay for free service of the provider. However there are some hosts who don?t put these banners or other forms of advertising in exchange for their services.

Thus one should look for:

1) How are the ads looking like in one?s page: User should keep in mind that the color patter of his/her site should not get disturbed with the color of the banner or ad placed by the provider? It is always better that user should select a host who permits user to place a banner code anywhere the user wants. This is the best way as the user is free to place the banner at the place of his/her ease.

2) To check if the host is displaying targeted ads: If one?s site displays totally contrast ads then it is really annoying for one?s visitors example if one?s site is for pet care and the ad is displaying car sale then it is really unprofessional. Moreover one must watch out for sites that display pornographic ads.

3) The kind of ads hosts are displaying: One should never at any cost sign up for a site that advertises through popups. The disadvantage of popups is that they are like a threat of viruses and so visitors don?t like to return back to one?s site after experiencing them.

4) Is the host permitting the user to display his/her own ads: User should check if the host is allowing him/her to display his/her own ads. This issue is not at all small and so user must take it seriously.

3. Availability of tools and scripts available

There are some good features like forums, guest books, counters; polls etc which one can use as additional to his/her site. If user is not willing to handle installing such an addon from a third party then he/she can search for a hosting provider who provides it in advance. One should understand that such tools are not always the best and most are available without any cost. In contrast, if user selects an hosting providing few or no such tools then they probably needs to counter a slow server which will adversely affects the clients.

4. Available bandwidth and situation after full consumption:

It doesn?t matter the size of one?s site but user should verify that the available bandwidth must be at least 1GB a month. The concern host should be such that who propose a paid subscription rather just jamming the accessibility of one?s page as he/she consumed the entire quota of bandwidth. This can be effective to maintain the flow of traffic with out any form of barrier.

To understand better here is simple calculation if one?s pages average are of 50kB, including images, or (approx. ) 0. 05MB. Now let?s assume one?s visitors browse 3 pages on average, before they leave the site. That is equivalent to 3 x 0. 05 = 0. 15 MB. Now after dividing 1GB (or 1,000 MB) by 0. 15, the result obtained would be 6,666 i. e. the average number of visitors one can expect in one month without exceeding the bandwidth quota. Now after dividing that by 30 one will get 222 visitors per day. One should also keep in mind that search engines also consumes bandwidth which can be even consumption of as much as 100MB if one is having large number of pages.

5. What one?s URL will seem like?

Although one can receive a short URL without any cost from several sites, however, it’s quite nice if one?s host offer a URL that’s easy to memorize. One should go for a host that offers a sub domain if accessible (http:// www. one?saccount. theirdomain. com instead to http://www. theirdomain. com/one?saccount).

With the web hosting scenario currently prevailing, one can say that, free web hosting is among the most misunderstood concepts on the web of today. Tremendous popularity of free web hosting plans is due to emergence of new web site into the idea without really measuring the future results. Several people cannot see the dim side of the free web hosting plan but a new webmaster definitely can groom him/her after penetrating through such conditions.

What happens when Coke promote Pepsi on their website!!!? Some people may find the above question comical, but in fact it is a root problem related to free web hosting plans. Clients are compelled to advertise different things which are not related to them, this is the way several companies make it an affordable `deal?. It can be through anyway, it can be through pop-ups, pop-under, headline ads, implanted ad sense etc. The user should host advertisement on his/her website in any of the case because it is the source of revenue for the concern hosting company providing free hosting services, whether the user like it or not, it doesn?t matter. Such situations are not only irritating but also capable of destroying the look of user?s page; several times the denotation of the ad and its entrance and exit is not in the user?s hand, they are simply induced into one?s site and the user can do nothing but to suffer it.

Traffic chaos

The last line in web hosting is no doubt, bandwidth (data transfer) costs money and if the user develop a strategy for free service it is quite certain that the bandwidth enjoyed by the user will be limited. Several times when the user attempt to access a web site which is located on a free server is shown with the message given next: ?The user had crossed the supplied bandwidth limit, please seek next month?. There is nothing to amaze if a webmaster gets frustrate onto it. For an instance, a user build an attractive page, promoted it in the market, grabbed a plenty of audience, and then losing that audience quite easily because his/her page does not permitting further hits for the month.

SEO woes

In the beginning, it can cause a lump of irritation to the user but later provides the lesson about how search engines operates and the way search engines handle name resolution. In approximately complete cases free hosting plans restrict the user in pointing a domain name (www. mysite. com) to an actual page. Rather, the user is compelled to adopt a substitute (concept) termed as URL redirection. The function of URL is to permit a webmaster to identify a site that the URL is supposed to point to. Thus if a user types in www. illustration. com and one has configured it to redirect to www. freehost/users/mysite. html it will end up on that page. Such sorts of things are not a big issue until and unless the user start attempting to reach to the condition where his/her website get indexed in the search engines. Then the user put forward his/her site (www. illustrations. com) in the front of few directories and then inquire from them about some of the good link partners but then a shake of surprises arises, when the user come to know that he/she has not been included in the lists of SE?s. Inspite of the fact that the user has 100 solid back links pointing towards www. illustrations. com, still every one knows what is going on. The root cause is that www. illustrations. com possesses no matter in it, but merely redirects the user to actual page at any of the reputed site. It is a fact that SE?s never index a page containing zero data in it, rather consider it as an effort to hoodwink their algorithm, which results in proscription of the user?s domain name. Then the only option left will be is to forget the domain name and take a U-turn towards free hosting address, which is not a preferable work in real sense.

The spirit of free web hosting is not bad enough as shown above. As there are several positives aspects on which one can rely upon. Like for e. g. there are some free hosting providers which do not compel the user for advertising, using limited bandwidth and also allow pointed domains. Only daunting task is to search them out. Thus, an ideal hosting without hurdles can be enjoyed by loosening slightly the pocket. The user can enjoy an outstanding hosting by paying $5. 95 per month, it asks for little money but the efforts will be WORTH it.

World never ever run on the idea of one-sided benefit, mutual benefit is accomplished one way or the other. This very concept ere is applicable on free Web hosting also. But before that one must what the hosting term is; it is a process of accumulating files onto a web server so that through a web browser visitors can evaluate it.

Webmasters who have recently built the sites always face a dilemma in choosing an appropriate host for his/her site, they get magnetized towards free host providers which are available throughout the cyber world, however, as discussed previously, the service provided by a free web host is not actually free as it declares, it has it?s own drawbacks such as lack of sovereign domain name for the user.

In the case of a new webmaster, selection of ideal host can be a daunting task and even when it comes to free web host; the choice should be selective one, because the majority of free web hosts aim to exploit their users. Moreover, as user counters some of the drawbacks such as assisting a small server place and inability of utilizing the FTP clients, lack of domain name, and ample amount of ads via the Web Company and scarcity of benefits, needs to be faced while searching for a free hosting. The web hosts attempts to wrap up their costs by publishing their or any other companies ads on their user?s website.

One should account about few things, before deciding about a host, it includes requirements of the user, features offered by the host, space allowed by the host, any statistics, what form of domain name offered by the host, can user use his/her own domain name or rather provide name servers, do the host provide feature of email address, type and location of advertisements on user?s site? Firm answers of all these questions are must before coming to any of the conclusion.

If one talk about the requirements, then now a day?s websites are available in two forms static or dynamic, majority of hosts prefer static hosting and if a user?s website is dynamic then he/she should search for a host providing the potential to host the website with the use of scripting languages. Dynamic services are provided by only few companies but with several restrictions, such as no data availability, etc. Same happens with availability of space which is in the range of 5MB to 50 MB, changing with respect to other factors; companies extract more benefits as they provide more space to the user. There are many free hosts who don?t provide the use of own domain names as it is not beneficial for them. That is the reason why most of the time the user?s web address becomes www. myname. freehosting. com.

Further to long URLs accounts, a further contentious issue is their reliability. It is generally believed that free host providers means hosts with old servers and giving free space wrapping up the amount through free advertisement. This is the reason why majority of free web hosts don?t provide the guarantee of servers running through out the day excluding general breakdowns? Another problem lies in scarcity of bandwidth providing, it may create problem when user?s site starts gathering a large amount of traffic and bandwidth extends its genuine limit.

Hence after judging all the factors one can say that free web hosting is not that bad as it looks, here one can surf without many charges. One may need to counter some of the restrictions but it is a boon to newcomers who want to do something new on the web.

In terms of price, one can find two types of hosting in the market:

1. Paid web hosting and

2. Free web hosting.

Several people run away from free hosting thinking it nothing but making fool of one.

However, it can have its own advantages.

It relies on the use and place of the user.

Why use (purpose)?

When one talk about a commercially meant website, for e. g. an Ecommerce web-store, dependability and uptime is must. As it is well said, downtime for second, high amount revenue in crater. However, some free web hosting assures providers warranty of uptime, still one cannot make them liable if they fail to reach as per user’s requirements. Now one will ask why? Since their clause mention lack of uptime guarantee due to free of cost service. As mentioned above, along with a crucial business website one cannot commit suicide by relying on a free web hosting.

Though, there are several user’s trying something outstanding or different from others on their websites, not assured with positive output. For them free web hosting is the best choice as it does not involve any gamble with currency and both parties can prevent themselves from any unanticipated damage. Each person learns from experiences and what can be the best way to learn as compare to it? One can see free hosting plans as supreme platform for optimistic webmasters to launch themselves to a new helpful scenario. Certainly, it is not free in the real sense, they ask something in return i. e. visiting sponsors, exhibiting ads on hosted pages, reading emails, and not long, sharing in online communities of the free web-host. This final alternative cannot say to be a worse thing as online communities permit several users to interact and discover something new from one another.

At the other hand, there are several users who heir free web hosting for a personal site as they do not think there is any use to denote time and payment for it. Still one can find few free web hosts in the market offering free service for nothing just to deal with. Thus, an apparent objective for going for a free web hosting is quite imperative. If the objective is sensitive and no excuse to problematic situations, then one should not recommend free web hosting. Except that, free web hosting cannot consider as bad.

Why position of the user?

In the present scenario, one can afford Web hosting plans in a reasonable way (some even for $1 a month). Thus, charges are not a big issue regarding web hosting for the people having high standard of living, reserve revenue can be a good option for the people to groom their web site. Further, working people can use a Paypal account as a source of payment. If one talks about students and young people they do not have much revenue to spend. For them, free web hosting plans can be the last and best alternative.

Hence, one cannot consider free web hosting a worse thing as people of some specific category can utilize it to fulfill their goals. So for the students and people trying to learn new things and gaining new experience can select, free web hosting as the best alternative.

Hello, and welcome to this Hostmonster web hosting review. In this review I will be taking a look at Hostmonster. Hostmonster was the brain child of Matt Heaton, Matt runs a number of different hosting companies, the companies that I’m aware of are Hostmonster, Bluehost and fast Domain, there may be more out there as well, who knows! In total Matt’s companies (including Hostmonster) now host over 850,000 domains worldwide.

This hostmonster review was actually the very first “review website” that I created but I already have some more reviews in the pipeline, once complete they will be added to the “Web Hosting Reviews” column to the right of the page.

I rate web hosts based on a pre-set criteria, giving them a mark out of 5 for each section. These marks are then added together to give us a final score. The criteria I look at are as follows – price, reliability, control panel, features and support.

I believe that the five criteria above are the most important things to look for not just when looking at Hostmonster, but when reviewing any webhost. You can see my scores for each section to the left of the page. I will now start my Host monster review and explain the reasons behind my scores!

The Price

At the time of writing Hostmonster offers one set package to customers. The price of the package depends on the length of the contract you decide to take out – like most hosts, the longer you sign up for the cheaper your bill will be at the end of the month! You can find a current pricing plan to review below: (Correct at the time of writing!)

It is also worth noting that Hostmonster will supply you with a free domain name if you sign up to their hosting plan. When compared to other web hosts, I usually find that there isn’t much difference when it comes to pricing – almost everyone seems to fall within the same pricing range give or take a couple of dollars. However, not all hosts will offer you a free domain name. A domain name may not cost much nowadays but it’s always nice to get something for free!

I am going to give the Host monster pricing a score of 4/5. I have gone for a 4 instead of the full 5 due to the $30 setup fees charged if you decide to sign up to a short-term contract. This is obviously not an issue if you plan on going for one of the longer-term plans but, if you are looking at a short-term solution, then you may find the $30 setup fee unacceptable. Having said that, if you are looking for a short-term contract, most web hosts will charge you a setup fee (like Hostmonster) or they will charge you a higher monthly rate.

Do also bear in mind that all hosting fees with Hostmonster need to be pre-paid. So if you sign up for 12 months you would pay a lump sum of $95.40 ($7.95 * 12) up front to receive the 12 months service. Unfortunately this now seems to be the normal way for web hosts to work, very few will offer you true “pay monthly” contracts any more so this isn’t specific to Hostmonster.

Hostmonster Review score for Pricing: 4/5

Reliability

An unreliable host can be a massive hindrance. When looking for a web host, one of the things you need to look for is reliability – this is also known as “uptime”. Back when I first started web design in 1997, uptime was a big problem. Technology was still trying to catch up with the .com boom and a lot of my sites frequently appeared “offline” to visitors. Thankfully, this is no longer a problem as hosts now use state of the art data-centres to house their servers. These servers are monitored 24/7 by fully qualified technicians that ensure your site stays online 99.9% of the time (the industry standard).

You will notice that I didn’t say 100% of the time. Even today, no host can claim to have your site online 100% of the time – they can’t account for fires, power cuts, natural disasters and such like. However, the hosts can protect you from hackers, DOS attacks and other forms of abuse that may result in downtime for your website. Hostmonster does this as well as anyone; server hardening has been performed and technicians are always on hand to cope with any problems quickly and efficiently. At the time of writing, my site has been online since early last year without any major outages. I have never noticed the site being down but obviously I don’t sit there hitting my F5 key 24 hours a day!

For the excellent uptime I have experienced whilst using Hostmonster I am going to give it 5/5. This is the highest score I can give and, in my opinion, it is fully justified. My site has been online for the best part of 18 months and I have suffered no downtime and no business has been lost.

*Update April 2008

Since writing the above, my site has been offline on one occasion. This was due to an apache upgrade but no warning was received and the sites were offline for around 24 hours according to visitors. So with that in mind, I’m chaning my score from 5/5 to the 4/5 listed below. I’m not saying that Hostmonster have suddenly become unreliable, far from it, but it was a bit of a headache whilst the apache upgrade was on going, it’s worth noting that since then the uptime has been fine.

Hostmonster Review score for Reliability: 4/5

Control Panel

I often feel that this is one of the most overlooked aspects of any web host. An easy-to-use control panel can save you hours of hard work. There are countless times I have been forced to stumble around a badly-designed control panel looking for features that might not even exist. Thankfully, Host monster uses the “cPanel” control panel. The “cPanel” is my personal favourite control panel, mainly for its pleasant appearance and its layout. Everything that you would possibly need to do can be done from the “cPanel” and can usually be reached within a couple of clicks.

The “cPanel” can be run in a number of different themes or “Skins”. Host monster have decided to use the “XP Revolution” skin. As the name suggests, this is designed to look like Windows XP. Whilst this isn’t my favourite Cpanel skin, it has proved popular with may users.

*Update April 2008

Since writing the above, Hostmonster have moved to the new “cPanel 11″ and no longer use the “XP Revolution” skin.

You can viewa screen shot of the Hostmonster cPanel below:

Another great thing about the cPanel is that it is one of the most widely used control panels on the internet. This means if you ever run into any problems or have any questions, then a simple search on google will return hundreds, if not thousands of results. This is a lot better than using a custom control panel that is very hard to navigate and understand. (I’m looking at you 1&1 and Godaddy!)

I am going to give the Hostmonster’s control panel another maximum score of 5/5. Mainly for the reasons I have stated above, when looking for a web host control panel you simply won’t find better than the “cPanel”. As you can probably tell I can’t speak highly enough of the cPanel and I commend Hostmonster for going down this route rather than the custom control panel route like so many hosts seem to do nowadays.

Hostmonster Review score for the Control Panel: 5/5

Features

It’s all well and good having a great pricing plan, control panel and uptime, but none if this matters unless the hosting plan has the features you need. As far as features go, you will find it difficult to top Hostmonster’s package. Here is a breakdown of what I feel are the most important parts of the Host monster package:

• 200 GB Disk Space
• 2,000 GB of Bandwidth (per month!)
• Host unlimited Domains
• Free Domain name
• Fantastico
• 100 MYSQL Databases
• PHP4 and PHP5 Support (You choose)

The first two bullet points are the first things you should look for in a host. This is the amount of disk space and bandwidth you will receive. 200 GB of Disk Space and 2,000 GB of Bandwidth will be more than enough for any website, even one packaged with multimedia files! I run a number of sites on my package and I have never come anywhere near my disk space or bandwidth allowance.

The next thing on the list is the Hostmonster “Deal Clincher” for me. Host monster is one of the only web hosts I have come across that allows you to host an unlimited number of domains. If you have more than one website, then you really need to look at how many domains a host will allow you to run from the one account. As I said, Hostmonster allows you to run an UNLIMITED number of domains on the one hosting account. This means that you will be saving a fortune in extra hosting costs as you will be able to run all of your websites from the one hosting account.

The free domain name feature is one I have already mentioned in the pricing section so I am going to skip that. The next thing on my list is “Fantastico”. Fantastico is a great little add-on that comes with your cPanel and it allows you to install a number of popular web scripts via a simple wizard. So, if you are planning to run a blog, guest-book, helpdesk, image gallery or any other script on your site then Fantastico will be able to do the installation process for you, no messing around with databases or permissions, just follow a simple wizard!

The final two points to review may not be relevant to you, but if you are planning to run a script on your website then the chances are that it will need to use a MYSQL database. Thankfully, Hostmonster provides customers with 100 MYSQL databases with their hosting plan, so you won’t have any problems running your scripts. The final point is also for those of you who wish to run scripts. Some scripts will only run on a certain version of PHP (usually 4 or 5) and Hostmonster actually let’s you choose which version of PHP to run – it is the only host I have come across that gives you such freedom.

With the amount of features offered for this amazing price, I feel that I have no choice but to give Hostmonster another 5/5. There are lots of web hosts out there to review that offer great deals and Hostmonster defiantly falls into that category. You will be hard pressed to find another host that gives you as many features for the small price you pay for the hosting.

Hostmonster Score for Features: 5/5

Support

Last, but not least, I look at the single most important aspect behind any good webhost – the support system! Before you sign up to any web hosting program you should make sure that you know what type of support is available to you and how helpful that support is going to be when you do need to use it. I always send a test email with a general hosting question BEFORE I sign up with anyone – that way you can check too see how fast the response time is and how helpful the support is.

I did this test with Hostmonster and am pleased to say that they passed with flying colours. First of all I emailed them a rather technical question via their helpdesk; I asked them about ION CUBE (a PHP encryptor) and if they allowed you to edit the php.ini files. Within 2 hours my question had been answered by a friendly, competent technician and he even offered to do any ION CUBE installations for me if I had any problems.

I sent my second enquiry to the “affiliate” department. I asked them about the differences between their own in house affiliate program and why they also used Commission Junction. Again, I got a reply within two hours and the response was friendly and efficient.

The email support is great, but there are times when you may need to get in touch with them as a matter of urgency. So it’s important to make sure there is phone support available as well as email. Again, Hostmonster provides you with great toll free phone support. Thus, my advice would be to ‘phone them before joining and ask them a few basic hosting questions, just to see what their response is like! All the contact information is detailed below, so you could even try them out right now!

Toll Free Phone Support – (866) 573-4678
Live Chat and Email Help

To conclude, I am going to give the support for Hostmonster a rating of 5/5. It’s another maximum score but you can’t fault them on their speed, knowledge and friendliness. Just give them a call for yourselves or send them an email and you will see what I mean. You will be amazed at the response time. A lot of other big hosts take up to 48 hours to reply to emails. It’s refreshing to come across a web host that replies to you within a couple of hours. It reminds me of the good ol’ days!

*Update April 2008

As I mentioned earlier, the apache upgrade meant that I needed to contact support. Unfortunatelty a lot of other customers had the same idea so the helpdesk took longer to reply than normal. I did however call the support line via Skype and managed to get through to a “real person” who fixed my problem in less than 10 minutes. However, for the longer than usual helpdesk reply I’m going to take off a point!

Hostmonster rating for Support: 4/5

Conclusion

In closing, I would like to thank you for reading my Hostmonster review, I hope that you have found it helpful and I hope you are now able to make an informed decision about which web host to use. It goes without saying that I would definitely recommend Hostmonster to any of my friends, family or future clients and if you decide to go down that route, I’m sure you will be delighted also. As you can see from the final score below, I was very impressed!

Many thanks for reading this Hostmonster Review, I hope that your quest to find a new web host is a successful one!

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