Westhost isn’t a household name in the web hosting service, and it’s not the cheapest either – compared to other hosting services, this service has one of the priciest in the industry, starting at $4. That being said, this company started in 1998, so you can be assured that they have fully adjusted to the changes and battles in the business. Anyway, it may not be as mainstream as GoDaddy and HostGator, it’s still a widely used web host service. So, how does it fare against its competitors and what are its pros and cons?

 

ITS PACKAGES AND OFFERS

Westhost offers three types of hosting services, all to meet your needs and preferences. These are the typical web hosting service, cloud service and dedicated server. Here are some of their features:

 

• Shared hosting – this plan comes in three varieties, starting at four dollars. This plan includes:
  • Personal hosting – this comes with a 50 GB disk space, along with a limited bandwidth of 1000 GB and a $12.50 domain price This type of website is perfect for personal blogs, temporary projects and low traffic sites.
  • Preferred hosting – this comes with a 200 GB disk space, a bandwidth of 2500 GB with a free setup and a free domain, perfect for small forums, blogs and small businesses.
  • Business hosting – as its name suggests, this service is geared towards e-commerce website owners. It comes with unlimited disk space, bandwidth, free domain setup and an SSL Security Certificate, which assures that your site will be protected from external threats.
  • Cloud hosting – this plan is basically a VPS (virtual private server) which is a complete upgrade of the typical web hosting service. It can handle websites with hundreds of pages and a large amount of traffic at that. It also comes in three varieties, including:
  • Burst – this standard data plan costs $50 a month and comes with a 1128 MB RAM, 1.2 GHz dedicated CPU, a 20 GB disk space, one dedicated IP and a bandwidth of 500 GB.
  • Storm – this data plan dishes out 1880 MB of RAM, a 3 GHz dedicated CPU, 50 GB disk space and a 1250 GB bandwidth.
  • Monsoon – this gives out a whopping 3384 MB of RAM, along with 5.4 GHz dedicated CPU, 90 GB disk space and a bandwidth of 2250 GB.

• Dedicated hosting – this type of hosting wherein a client uses an entire server, with no one sharing it. Westhost has numerous offers starting at $195 while mostly using Intel E5 servers. The downside here is unlike other VPS companies, you don’t get to choose the operating system, since Westhost does that for you.

Overall, we can safely say that Westhost is very competitive, despite being not a household name in the web hosting industry. It also offers satisfactory e-mail functions!

 

Domain registration and security

The importance of having the right domain name is the key to getting a large amount of traffic. Keep in mind that there are over millions of websites in the Internet, and each has visibly unique domain names – typos included (try typing Gogle.com and Facebok.com). Westhost has numerous services pertaining to domain registration, and these include:

• URL forwarding – this involves securing your domain name, including its misspelled versions.
• Domain name parking – you’ll be able to register a domain name for free, and you’ll only pay once you start publishing to it.
• Domain management tool – if you want to change your domain name information, you can simply update it yourself without having to call the company.

Other than the aforementioned services, Westhost has the domain transfer lock, and the DNS management. Overall, we can safely say that their domain service is solid.

 

Administration and control panel

Westhost’s control panel is a work of art: polished, intuitive and gives you access to everything you need. It gives you direct, quick and easy access to matters pertaining to billing, support options and billing management. However, this takes time to get used to, as the cPanel (a third party user interface that allows you to customize your website) takes a lot of time to get used to, especially for new users. Although it’s easy and intuitive to users with ample computer knowledge, newbies might have a hard time utilizing it.

 

User experience

I had a good experience while testing WestHost’s shared hosting plans, but a number of users online deem their service unsatisfactory. A lot of legitimate reviews from websites like Yelp and whoishostingthis.com are furious with the company’s customer support system, and the way the company’s customer service dealt with their problems, including down time and security, even if the company guarantees 99% up time throughout the year. Of course, this is a major downside and possibly, a red flag for potential customers.

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Westhost Web Hosting Services

Affordable and professional web hosting with over 1,000,000 domains worldwide. For a small fee, you can easily take your small business online. Establish your digital presence today in a Westhost web hosting package that suits your needs.