HostHero is an excellent Canadian Web Hosting company that has been around since 2009. They offer an array of Cloud Hosting plans, VPS, WordPress and Dedicated Servers for consumers and small businesses.Their plans are built to scale so you can be confident that you’ll be able to grow your business on their hosting platform.
HostHero Cloud Hosting Plan Review
HostHero offers 3 Cloud Hosting Plans:
Starter Cloud Plan
Business Cloud Plan
Premium Cloud Plan.
These plans come with Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth, Unlimited Add-on Domains, Unlimited Email Accounts and Unlimited MySQL Databases.
The Starter Plan is perfect for small websites or blogs that are just getting started. The Business plan is great for growing websites that need more speed and resources. The top tier Premium Cloud Hosting Plan includes a Private SSL Certificate, Search Engine Optimization and Daily Backups.
HostHero offers a FREE Domain Registration or Transfer for the 1st year on any of the above shared hosting plans.
HostHero also offers a 30-day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.
HostHero Review – Hosting Performance
We had the opportunity to test the HostHero Business Cloud Hosting plan for 2 weeks. It took a few clicks to install WordPress and we were up and running. The server was fast as expected since HostHero uses SSD drives on their shared hosting servers. We love hosting companies that use cPanel as it makes managing your hosting and email a breeze. The overall performance and speed at HostHero was outstanding.
What are the benefits of Cloud Hosting? The main advantage of Cloud Hosting is ‘Scalability’ – it provides better Performance, it is Reliable and above all it is cost effective.
Cloud Hosting maximizes the performance of websites and web applications as the load is evenly distributed between the servers connected to the network. It is reliable as it uses a multi-server hosting architecture.
HostHero Review – Customer Support
HostHero’s Customer Service is Top Notch! Their customer support is all in-house, nothing is outsourced. They are very flexible with respect to providing pro-rated credit towards changing plans. This means that if you signup on a 1 year plan and want to upgrade, your remaining paid balance will be applied to the upgrade.
They provide 24/7 Customer Service through ticket support and they also have live chat and phone support available.
Their Knowledge Base covers various Categories such as Pre-Sales Questions, cPanel, FFMPEG, VPS and Dedicated Servers, MySQL Basics, to name a few.
HostHero Control Panel and Features Review
HostHero has the best and powerful features of any affordable hosting plan. They are; Free Domain Name, Free Website Migration, Unlimited Websites and Email Accounts, Free Website Builder, One-Click Script Installer, 24/7 In-House Support & Money Back guarantee, to name a few……
cPanel is included in all their Cloud Hosting Plans. You can upload and manage your website, view stats, create email addresses, install WordPress, create databases and tons more with just a few clicks.
HostHero has been in Business for over 10 years, providing affordable Web Hosting Services on all levels. Feel free to reach out to them – they are always there to Help!
PROS:
Affordable Hosting Plan
Really easy to use cPanel control panel
Fast hosting servers that use SSDs
Locked-in pricing
CONS:
No SSL on the Starter or Business Cloud Plans (you can still use free SSL certificates)
HostUpon offers two of the most affordable and fully featured web hosting plans on the market. The company launched in 2007 and has been an industry leader, with no outsourcing, and an in-house team based in Toronto, Canada. With 5 eco-friendly data centers across the world and proactive server monitoring, HostUpon guarantees 99.9% uptime and reliability. They offer 3 shared hosting plans that are perfect for startups, e-commerce sites and small businesses.
We’ve heard so many good things about HostUpon and they are actually rated the Best Canadian Web Hosting company around.
Plans and Pricing
We had the opportunity to test the HostUpon Start Unlimited plan which includes Unlimited bandwidth, disk space, databases and more for $2.95/month prepaid for 3 years. The Business Unlimited plan starts at $5.95/month and includes free search engine submission. Free domain registration or transfer, one-click script installer, and an easy site builder are all included for free with both plans.
Our test account at HostUpon was in their Canadian data center in Toronto.
The order process is quite straightforward: you can choose your free domain name, or have one transferred from an existing registrar, and optionally apply Whois privacy for $9.95. SEO addon is available for $29.95, a spam filter for $19.95, Dedicated IP address for $30 and website backup for $49/yr. All of these addons are completely optional and we only opted for the SSL certificate, which was $79.95/yr.
HostUpon offers a Free Domain registration and you can choose either a .com or .ca domain name.
A 30-day money back guarantee is offered on all web hosting plans, which gives the user the ability to test out the hosting services without agreeing to any long-term contract. Their prices are definitely competitive and the best part is your price is ‘locked’ meaning your price never goes up unlike other providers who inflate renewal prices, no hidden fees or tricks here. Simply great customer service and retention. HostUpon have grown their business organically through word-of-mouth.
Performance and Reliability
HostUpon uses some of the best server technology available, such as Dell and IBM storage servers, Cisco networking and virtualization software. Having these direct service level agreements ensures the backbone network is fully redundant and optimal.
The company utilizes CloudLinux which provides a stable environment for each shared hosting client by allowing limits to be set for each account individually. This means that no one user can monopolize resources such as CPU and memory. At HostUpon, the default each client can burst up to is 10% of the CPU on the server. This however can be changed and configured to work, so it is never a limitation. HostUpon will ensure everything is updated and configured correctly, so you never run into an issue with resource limits. Our tests confirmed, with multiple scripts properly configured, we never ran into a resource limit, even after sending thousands of visitors to the test site, concurrently.
HostUpon is also a green hosting company which is rare in Canada, which means much more than simply buying carbon credits: they think outside the box and take every initiative to reduce emissions. The entire infrastructure was built with eco-friendly technology too!
HostUpon Customer Support
With any hosting company, support is key! HostUpon support separates them from the pack because they understand how important it is. They are available 24/7 and once you’re connected to an agent, you’ll be talking to a real industry expert. They do not outsource any support, which we found quite impressive, considering the size of their company!
A free migration/transfer service is included in all hosting plans, which is very useful if you’re moving your website from a different hosting provider. HostUpon will transfer your website, database and emails from your current provider free of charge and without any downtime.
The average support ticket response time was under 15 minutes, and customers also have the option of calling their toll-free phone number. Live Chat support is available at most times for sales and general support. We tested their ticket system on various occasions and had our tickets replied to within minutes. The best part was that the replies were helpful and not predefined canned responses.
cPanel Control Panel and Features Review
When it comes to managing your hosting account, it’s important to find out what control panel your web host uses. HostUpon includes the industry-leading cPanel control panel. From adding domains, to accessing the site builder and uploading files, cPanel makes it easy.
cPanel is one of the main reasons we like HostUpon. The control panel has tons of features and is very user-friendly. Everything is point and click and if need help they even have video tutorials for cPanel and FTP.
Softaculous is a one-click installer included within cPanel in all hosting plans. This gives you the ability to easily install scripts such as WordPress. No technical skills are required, you just choose the software you want to install, enter the form details, and it’s done! We asked HostUpon to install WordPress for us and in less than 10min they installed it on our test domain name, fast and easy.
PROS:
Free Domain Name
Features and Script Installation
Support team in Canada
Servers located in Toronto, Canada
1-click WordPress install and auto updates
Easy Website Builder with templates
CONS:
Monthly cost (without prepayment)
Do not use a CDN (they do offer CloudFlare for free though)
