HostMonster Review

HostMonster, which is a web hosting company that has been in business since 1996 and hosts over a million websites.

Wow has HostMonster grown up! Before, their service used to be a “one size fits all” approach that offered one plan and that was it. These days, there’s a clearly defined upgrade path from basic shared hosting to VPS Hosting to dedicated servers. Although the more powerful options are hidden down in the footer links, the options are there if you need them.

HostMonster Packages Review

• Starter: This plan is the most limited of all their offerings. It only allows 1 domain to be hosted and they even limit the amount of parked domains you can have on your account. Offers $50 in advertising credits. As for pricing, 12 months prepay is $5.95/mo, 24 months prepay is $4.95/mo and the 36 month prepay is where you get the advertised $3.95/mo rate.
• Plus: This is their most popular plan because it is the first plan they have that offers unlimited domains to be hosted as well as unlimited everything else. The advertised price is $6.49 per month, but, again, it is based on a very long prepay. Here’s your choices:  12 months prepay is $8.95/mo, 24 months prepay is $7.95/mo and the 36 month prepay is where you get the advertised $6.49/mo rate.
• Business Pro: This plan offers $180/yr in extras (no idea what that means exactly), 2 SpamExperts email protected accounts, 1 SSL certificate for your eCommerce website, 1 dedicated IP, domain whois protection, SiteBackup Pro and higher performance (again, they don’t tell you what that means). Pricing ranges from $19.95 to $14.95 depending on your prepay. Unlike most hosts, their more expensive plan doesn’t offer a monthly payment plan.

Some other features that they provide are a cPanel control panel, free website builder, a free domain, $100 in Google Adwords credits, $50 in Facebook Ads credits and $50 in Bing/Yahoo credits.

Here’s a feature breakdown of their Plus and Greater plans:

Hosting Support Review

HostMonster boasts 100% US-based customer support including telephone support, live chat and email support. The calls are handled out of their Orem, Utah headquarters.

If you are new to this game and are just starting to put up your first website, you will soon learn how important an exceptional customer service department is to your success. As with each of our reviews, we always test out a firm’s customer service department by asking different employees, a few extremely complicated questions.

What can you say about HostMonster, they came through one of the most essential tests we use with flying colors. When we confronted them with an issue, if the person answering the phone did not know the correct answer, they put us on hold for a few minutes, and asked one of their colleagues. Each and every time they found a solution to our problem, and it did not take them too long either.

Price Value Review

The web hosting company HostMonster is an superb value if you plan on constructing a large number of sites that do not receive more than 1,000 visitors a day each. If you plan on building a mega site that gets 100,000’s visitors a day, you will require either a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS).

That being said, there are less expensive companies that you can utilize. But, if you plan on becoming a serious webmaster and building a highly successful online business, it will not take you too long to learn why these others firms charge less than HostMonster. You will either have problems with the speed of your site, their customer service, or in the worst case scenario, your website will be down way too often, which of course is totally unacceptable.

Marketing Promotions

HostMonster offers a total of a whopping $250 in free advertising with your Plus account.

If you are a savvy shopper, and make use of these coupons, it is possible to a save yourself a great deal of money. HostMonster does a pretty good job in this area, and if you check your email frequently, and know when your hosting package is up for renewal, you can get it for less than you would normally be required to pay.

Ease of Use & Quality

HostMonster recently redesigned their website and we’re fans of the new look. However, transitioning from screens, such as visiting their help center to get customer support, yikes, it goes from a dark grey color (as seen in our screenshot on the top of the page) to a blinding white!

That being said, their help center is very new-customer friendly with almost 40 video tutorials, a fully packed Knowledgebase and many other support features. We found a link to a HostMonster forum but the forum is absolutely loaded with spam at the time of this review with the spam comments dating back only 4 days (it’ll probably be cleaned up shortly, there’s no evidence of full abandonment with years of spam).

Are you a customer of HostMonster? Be sure to leave your customer review below to let our viewers know how your service has been!