Category Archives: Justhost

JustHost Web Hosting

JustHost isn’t our favorite Web hosting service, but it’s worth checking out with an accessible, easy-to-navigate interface, as well as shared, dedicated, and virtual private server (VPS) hosting. On the other hand, JustHost lacks the all-around attractive feature sets found in HostGator$3.33 at HostGator – Shared, the PCMag Editors’ Choice for novice-friendly Web hosting services, and Dreamhost$4.95 at DreamHost – Shared, the feature-packed Editors’ Choice Web hosting service for more skilled webmasters.

Shared Web Hosting Plans
JustHost offers three Linux-based shared Web Hosting plans. The basic Starter plan ($5.99 per month) offers 100 email accounts, 100GB storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, one-year free domain registration and hosting, and basic Site Backup. The Plus plan ($9.99 per month) adds unlimited email accounts, storage, and domains. The Business Pro plan ($19.99 per month with a one-year commitment) has all of the Plus plan’s features, in addition to free domain registration for life, a free SSL certificate, and Site Backup Pro.

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Those are solid plans, but HostGator, the Editors’ Choice for shared Web hosting, packs more bang for the buck. HostGator’s Linux- or Windows-based shared hosting packages all offer unlimited storage, bandwidth, databases, and email addresses. That’s hard to beat.

VPS Web Hosting Plans
If shared hosting isn’t robust enough for you, JustHost has four VPS hosting plans, which include root access, an enhanced control panel, guaranteed server resources, and managed services. VPS hosting prices start at $29.99 per month for 2GB of RAM, 30GB of disk space, and 1TB of monthly data transfers, and they scale as high as $119 per month for 8GB of RAM, 240GB of storage, and 4TB of monthly data transfers.

Hostwinds$4.50 at Hostwinds – Shared, the Editors’ Choice for VPS hosting, has even better plans. Its offerings start at $7.50 per month for 1GB of RAM, 25GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited email, and half a CPU core and scale to $172 per month for 28.5GB of RAM, 600GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited email, and eight CPU cores. Hostwinds’s VPS plans also have a Windows operating system option, which is something that JustHost doesn’t offer.

Dedicated Web Hosting Plans
JustHost also has dedicated Web hosting packages starting at $119.99 per month. The servers can be outfitted with up to 1TB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and 15TB of monthly data transfers—specs that are typical for dedicated hosting in this price range. JustHost’s monthly data allotment tops the monthly data transfer offerings from Arvixe (10TB) and SiteGround$3.95 at SiteGround – Shared (5TB), but not Dreamhost (unlimited).

Unfortunately, JustHost only offers Linux-based dedicated servers. If you’re looking to host a site on a Windows-based dedicated server, I suggest taking a look at HostGator (the PCMag Editors’ Choice for dedicated hosting services). On the upside, you can host an unlimited number of domains.

Setting Up a Hosted Site
Setup is simple. I chose the Starter plan and then selected an available domain. Domain registration costs an extra $14.99 at sign-up, unless you commit to 36 months up front. I was then presented with a number of extras, some of which were checked off by default, which I don’t appreciate. Domain Privacy Protection (83 cents per month), Site Backup Pro ($1.67 per month), SiteLock Domain Security ($1.67 per month), and Search Engine Jumpstart ($1.25 per month) were all preselected for me. Furthermore, the sign-up process was constantly interrupted by upselling.

Once you skip through all that, you’re greeted by three website building tools: WordPress, Mojo Marketplace, and Weebly$8.00 at Weebly, one of our top choices for Web-based website-builders. Weebly let me easily add slideshows, buttons, and YouTube video modules to my site.

Uptime, Downtime
Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of a hosting service. While your site is down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services—and they might not come back.

For this testing, I used a website monitoring tool to track my JustHost-hosted test site’s uptime. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and sends me an email if it is unable to contact the site for longer than one minute. I look at the data for the most recent 30 days for each site’s review. In my latest tests, JustHost lagged behind all the Web hosting services that I’ve tested except for Arvixe. While JustHost’s uptime was nowhere near as spotty as Arvixe’s in my testing, it’s still at the back of the pack, and that’s a problem.

Customer Service
To test the company’s customer service chops, I called JustHost’s 24/7 line to find out about WordPress hosting and how it differed from regular hosting. I waited less than two minutes before a helpful and friendly support person fielded my call and gave me the details.

Next, I started a Web chat to get instructions on how to import my WordPress blog. The Web chat is one of the best I’ve used, with a wait-time countdown clock and a subtle sound effect that let me know when the representative had responded. The rep sent me a link to a WordPress help page, saying that was all I needed. Overall, I enjoyed the JustHost customer service experience.

Money-Back Guarantee
JustHost has a money-back guarantee that lets you cancel your Web hosting at any time and receive a refund for the remainder of the unused time. That’s a pretty good incentive to at least sample the service.