Tag Archives: Hosting
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.
Siteground Hosting Sign Up
Here I’m going to show you how easy it is to sign up with SiteGround and how you can take the first step towards creating your website or blog with them.
SiteGround is a fantastic web host because of their secure, fast, feature-rich and cheap web hosting services.
- You get loads of features; like SSD storage, free website migration, free website backups, free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.
- They’re endorsed by WordPress; you get cheap WordPress hosting and you can get WordPress pre-installed or you can install WordPress yourself.
- They have a strong focus on speed and security; like HTTP/2 enabled servers, PHP7, SuperCacher plugin, free CloudFlare CDN.
- They offer cheap pricing and offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The process of signing up at SiteGround is very simple. Here below are the steps you need to go through to sign up with SiteGround.
1. GO TO SITEGROUND.COM
Go to their website and find their web hosting plans page (you can’t miss it).
2. CHOOSE YOUR SITEGROUND HOSTING PLAN
SiteGround has three web hosting plans you can sign up for; StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. (FYI I’m on the GrowBig plan.)
- The StartUp plan is perfect for beginners that are starting out; this plan lets you host 1 website, get 10GB of web space and is suitable for sites that get ~ 10,000 visits per month.
- The GrowBig plan is a great value for money plan and is ideal for WordPress powered sites. This plan includes the option for hosting multiple websites, 20GB of web space, suitable for sites with ~25,000 monthly visits, plust it comes with SiteGround’s SuperCacher, a tool that greatly improves a WordPress and Joomla site page speed.
- The GoGeek plan is best suited for ecommerce and large websites that are a bit more resource intense, or if you are after more geeky things like staging and GIT integration. This plan includes the option for hosting multiple websites, 30GB of web space, suitable for sites that get ~100,000 monthly visits.
3. CHOOSE DOMAIN NAME
Next you need to choose a domain name. You choose to register a new domain, or sign up using an existing domain you own (free website transfer valued at $30 comes included with all plans, which is awesome).
4. REVIEW & COMPLETE YOUR ORDER
Next is the third and final step, where you create your account, fill out your personal details, your payment information (including PayPal) and the hosting options you want. Here below is a step-by-step guide.
This is is the standard stuff you have done a million times before; email, password, first and last name, country, phone number, etc.
Next is to give SiteGround your credit card details (Visa, MasterCard or Discover). Now you might ask, can I pay with PayPal? Yes you can.
You can use PayPal to pay for your hosting (I did). All you need to do is leave the payment details empty and reach out to SiteGround’s Sales Team using the Live Chat button (on top of the site in the main navigation).
Next is to choose your hosting services, addons and pay for your hosting. There are the two things to factor in here.
First thing is to choose the location of your preferred data center. Choose a location based on where you are and where your customer/audience is geographically located (i.e. if you are in the United States pick Chicago, if you are in Australia choose Singapore).
Second thing is to decide if you need the SG Site Scanner addon. SG Site Scanner is a monitoring service that checks your website daily and immediately notifies you if your website has been hacked or injected with malicious code.
5. AND YOU ARE DONE
Now you will receive an email confirming your order, and another email with the login to your SiteGround Customer Area.
If you haven’t already, go to siteground.com and sign up right now.
