Hostwinds Web Hosting Review

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February 08, 2022 March 28, 2022

Hostwinds: Hostwinds Web Hosting Review, Price & Deals

Hostwinds Is The Best Web Hosting, Best Web Hosting For WordPress & Business

Pros

Excellent reseller and VPS hosting plans
Terrific uptime in testing
Good customer service
Minecraft server hosting

Cons

Not every plan has a Windows server option
Short money-back guarantee window

Hostwinds Web Hosting

If you want a powerful and flexible web hosting service, Hostwinds should be on your radar. Hostwinds offers an array of shared, virtual private server (VPS), dedicated, cloud, WordPress, and reseller hosting packages, designed to appeal to both mom-and-pop shop owners and larger businesses. Hostwinds' feature-packed VPS and reseller offerings make it an Editors' Choice in those categories. Overall, Hostwinds is one of the best web hosts we reviewed.

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Hostwinds Shared Hosting

If your website doesn't require a high-end server to keep it up and running, shared web hosting may be right up your alley. Low-cost web hosting places your website on a server with other websites, thus sharing system resources. You pay less in this roommate situation, but big traffic spikes can slow down your site - or even be temporarily unavailable. Hosts do their best to prevent this from happening, but be aware that this is a shared hosting tradeoff.

Hostwinds offers attractive, wallet-friendly Linux-based shared hosting plans that come in three flavors: Basic, Advanced, and Ultimate. Unfortunately, Hostwinds lacks Windows-based plans. Its prices have gone up a bit since the last time we reviewed Hostwinds, but they're still relatively low overall. Basic (starting at $8.99 per month) offers unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited storage, a free dedicated IP address, and the ability to host a single domain. Advanced (starting at $10.99 per month) builds on Basic by letting you host up to six domains. Ultimate (starting at $12.99 per month) adds the ability to host an unlimited number of domains. Unless you have a limited budget, if you want a Hostwinds shared hosting package that offers room to grow, there's no reason to choose anything but the Ultimate plan. Like other web hosting services, Hostwinds offers discounts your way if you sign up for several months or years.

HostGator, our Editors' Choice for shared hosting, gives small and medium-sized businesses even more room to expand their web presence. Its Hatchling plan (starting at $10.95 per month) offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth, database, and email addresses, as well as a domain and support for third-party applications, such as content management systems and e-commerce platforms. HostGator's Baby plan (starting at $11.95 per month) builds on Hatchling's offering by adding unlimited domains. The top-tier Business plan (starting at $16.95 per month) also includes highly specialized options, such as a free dedicated IP and a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate upgrade. HostGator also lets you choose a Linux- or Windows-based server option. If you need to run Microsoft-specific scripts, you'll appreciate the Windows option. For its flexibility, HostGator is the top dog in the category.

Hostwinds VPS Hosting

VPS hosting is for people who want to build their sites on servers that provide more power than shared web hosting. With VPS hosting, your site still shares server space, but with very few other sites exploiting the resources. VPS hosting costs more money than shared hosting but is well worth the investment if you expect a lot of traffic. VPS sites are also more secure because some of their resources are isolated by virtualization.

If you're looking for VPS hosting, Hostwinds has you covered with four tiers, each with fully managed Linux- and Windows-based plans. The lowest tier of Managed Linux VPS hosting (starting at $10.99 per month) offers 1GB of RAM, one CPU core, 30GB of SSD disk space, and 1TB of monthly data transfers, while the upper-end (starting at $50.99 per month) gives Users get access to two CPU cores, 6GB of RAM, 100GB of SSD disk space, and 2TB of monthly data transfers. Windows VPS hosting has the same range in terms of hardware capability, but with an increased price (from $16.99 per month, up to $56.99 per month).

There are also several unmanaged hosting plans with both Linux and Windows options. For example, the lowest tier for an unmanaged Linux VPS starts at just $4.99 per month (for 1GB of RAM, 30GB disk space, 1TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited email), while the tenth tier goes up to $328.99 per month (for 16). Is. CPU cores, 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, 9TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email). Unmanaged Windows VPS plans start at $10.99 per month (for 1GB RAM, 30GB disk space, 1TB monthly data transfer, and unlimited email) and max out at $376.99 per month (16 CPU cores, 96GB RAM, 750GB ) disk space, 9TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited email). In short, Hostwinds has flexible, powerful VPS plans that beat most of its rivals. As a result, Hostwinds Virtual Private Server is the PCMag Editors' choice for web hosting.

Hostwinds Dedicated Hosting

Hostwinds gives you a choice of customizable or prefab Linux- or Windows-based dedicated servers. Dedicated hosting is powerful hosting that automatically puts your website on the server. As a result, your site has tremendous server resources to attract so that it can cope with high traffic volumes.

Prices for both prefab and customizable servers start at $75 per month, but either type of server can cost a lot, depending on how you configure them. You can build configurable servers with up to 3TB of hard drive storage or 1TB of SSD storage (per drive bay, with up to four drives depending on your server option), 96GB of RAM, and unlimited inbound monthly data transfers. Outbound data transfer starts at 10TB, with additional scaling costs of up to $750 for unmetered outbound traffic. If you max everything out, you can easily spend around $1,500 per month. Hostwinds' dedicated server offerings are quite good.

However, Hostwinds' dedicated packages fall a hair behind AccuWeb's offering. Regardless of the plan, you start with, you can outfit AccuWeb's dedicated servers with up to 512GB of memory, 8TB of storage, and 50TB of monthly data transfers. As a result, AccuWeb Hosting's dedicated hosting plans trail Hostwinds, the winner of the former category. AccuWeb now reigns as the Editors' Choice for dedicated hosting.

Hostwinds WordPress Hosting

If you want to use the WordPress content management system to build your website, you'll be happy to know that you can install it on regular Hostwinds servers as well as the company's WordPress-optimized servers. Hostwinds' WordPress plan starts at $8.99 per month for a hosted domain and unlimited storage and monthly data transfers (this is the top tier, the $12.99-per-month Ultimate plan adds unlimited domains). That said, for WordPress hosting with the extra punch, we suggest checking out A2, the category's Editors' Choice.

Linux-based A2 offers four excellent WordPress hosting tiers starting at $2.99 per month and offers unlimited storage and monthly data transfers from the $4.99 per month tier. The plans top out with a $43.99 per month managed package that includes unlimited databases and websites. You also get a free SSL certificate across the board. To learn more about the fantastically popular content management system, you should read How to Get Started with WordPress.

Hostwinds Cloud Hosting

Hostwinds also offers cloud hosting, a version of web hosting that spreads CPU, RAM, and other resources across multiple servers. This is in stark contrast to traditional hosting, which draws power from a single server. The advantage is that your site is not tied to the resources of a single server.

Hostwinds cloud hosting packages start at $4.99 per month for 1GB of RAM, a single CPU core, and 1TB of monthly data transfer. There's a hefty $328.99 per month plan for 96GB of RAM, sixteen CPU cores, 750GB of storage, and 9TB of monthly data transfers.

These are solid choices, but DreamHost and 1&1 Ionos remain the category's co-editor's choice picks. DreamHost, which is geared more towards small businesses, has packages that start at $4.50 per month (for 512MB of RAM, 100GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers) and $48 per month (for four CPU cores). , for 8 GB RAM). 80GB SSD storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers). On the other hand, 1&1 Ionos has incredibly powerful cloud hosting packages that favor enterprise-level customers. Please read that review for several cloud hosting options from 1&1 Ionos.

Hostwinds Reseller Hosting

If you're looking to enter the web hosting business for yourself, but you don't want to deal with the server and other infrastructure matters, check out Hostwinds' excellent reseller hosting packages. With reseller hosting, you rent server space from an established player and resell it to your customers.

Hostwind's reseller plans mirror their shared hosting plans starting at $8.99 per month for unlimited email, storage, and data transfers. There are both Linux and Windows dedicated and VPS packages on offer, as well as shared hosting, which is limited to Linux. Servers have the same RAM and storage amounts that Hostwinds supplies directly, which is not always the case. Hostwinds lets you apply your branding to the servers you rent, and it also provides 24/7 technical support.

Rival web hosts, such as A2, GoDaddy, and HostGator, also offer quality reseller offers, but Hostwinds goes the extra mile with stacked specs across different server categories. As a result, Hostwinds is an Editors' Choice for reseller hosting.

Hostwinds Building a Hostwinds Website

The website builder included in Hostwinds' hosting package is Weebly. The website builder comes under the care of e-commerce platform Square and provides a way to quickly build a website, blog, or online store. There are hundreds of themes and styles to choose from for your planned site. Weebly's builder lets users drag and drop site elements, including text, images, dividers, videos, maps, and more. Weebly also optimizes your site for desktop and mobile configurations, making it easy to design a site that anyone can browse.

Hostwinds E-Commerce and Security

Hostwinds has a Magento eCommerce app in its Softaculous library. We used Magento's drag-and-drop store builder to build an attractive store. Please read our Magento review for an in-depth look at this open-source shopping cart.

Hostwinds offers website monitoring for its shared and reseller plans, monitoring your site round the clock. If your site experiences downtime it automatically submits a help ticket on your behalf. You can also add ID protection for $5.00 per year, which hides your name and address in the Whois registry.

Hostwinds Excellent Uptime

Website uptime is an extremely important part of the web hosting experience. If your site is down, customers or customers may not be able to find you or access your products or services—and they may not return. Luckily, Hostwinds is extremely reliable.

For this test, we use a website monitoring tool to track the uptime of our test sites. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings our website and sends us an email if we are unable to contact the site for more than a minute. In our latest tests, Hostwinds went down zero times during the 14-day trial period. It proved to be much more reliable than the unreliable web hosting service of TMDHosting.

Hostwinds Good Customer Service, Short Refund Window

Hostwinds offers 24/7 phone, webchat, and ticket-based customer support. We tested chat support on a weekday evening, and we never had to wait more than a minute before a Hostwinds representative answered my questions. The person on the other side of the chat window accurately explained the differences between shared and VPS hosting to me.

We also called customer support for a weeknight to learn about Hostwinds' Minecraft hosting. The friendly rep gave us the details in a way that was easy to understand. Overall, we enjoyed Hostwinds' customer support experience.

Hostwinds used to have an impressive 60-day, money-back guarantee—not anymore. Instead, the company offers a requested refund within 72 hours of order purchase. This falls short of most companies' 30-day money-back guarantees. That short window doesn't give you much time to decide whether or not you want to stay with the company. Plus, the Cancel button isn't easy to find. If you decide to leave Hostwinds, you will need to go to the Account Management section.

Hostwinds The Way the Winds Blow

Despite its short refund window, Hostwinds is one of the best web hosting services. It boasts of satisfactory customer service, reliable uptime, and attractively priced hosting tiers that appeal to a wide range of people and companies. More importantly, Hostwinds stands tall as an Editors' Choice in the reseller and VPS subcategories. If you want reliable, complete Windows hosting (something that Hostwinds lacks), the excellent AccuWeb will serve you well.

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