Hostmonster Review

The Price

At the time of writing (Early 2007) Host monster 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 the current pricing plan below:

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 9/10. I have gone for a 9 instead of the full 10 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 my Hostmonster review) or they will charge you a higher monthly rate.

Hostmonster score for Pricing: 9/10

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 in 2007 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 (2006) 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 Host monster I am going to give it 10/10. 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.

Hostmonster score for Reliability: 10/10

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.

 You can read the rest of my review at http://www.hostmonster-the-review.com/