Coming in at only $2.99/month, Host Clear is a very affordable option. They offer one type of shared hosting and focus on customer service and an easy to use platform. At the price they offer for a 36 month contract, you do get a lot of features. The Control Panel (cPanel) is free and makes building your website a breeze. They offer 24/7 customer service and average less than a 1 hour response time. There is no charge to transfer your existing domain. On the downside, Host Clear does not offer SSL certificates and if you have a complicated website requiring a lot of features, you will find that the customization is rather limited. One thing is certain with Host Clear, they offer reliable, durable service at a fair price.

Host Clear has been around for a while and have acquired quite a few reviews. The reviews are all very similar which is a good thing. The reviews and customer testimonials all lead to the same place. Host Clear provides a great service, a very easy to use hosting platform with a lot of options. The ease of use is continually noted as well as the excellent response time of the customer service. The uptime has never been an issue. The biggest concerns that customers have is the inability to grow to more powerful servers and having to jump through hoops to get SSL certificates. This may be an issue to you, if you are running an eCommerce website with immense projected growth over the next 3 years. Customers also seem to be thrilled with the 45 day money back guarantee. If something doesn’t fit your needs, you have 45 days to decide for a full refund. With a solid hosting platform, great customer service and a very easy to use interface. Host Clear ranked quite high compared to other companies.

eHost offers one of the best priced plans on the market. Their basic plan (when paid in full) comes out to only $2.75 per month. That’s nearly a dollar less than some of the closest competitors. Many equally priced competitors start to fall short in certain areas, justifying their lower cost. That’s not the case with eHost, though. eHost is proud to have a very reliable uptime, average load speeds and great customer service. You get all of this for a very low cost and, because they are under the EIG umbrella, management will make sure that it continues. eHost provides a great service at a great price.

eHost has some pretty consistent user reviews and testimonials. The majority of users are very happy with their service from eHost. It seems the only real negative issues come from a complicated website exceeding the plans bandwidth. This seems like it could have been avoided if the customers understood the parameters before signing up for the shared hosting plan. WordPress users seem to be thrilled with eHost and the ease of the cPanel (control panel). Building a website is said to have been a breeze with eHost and the customer support is responsive and helpful. There are a few customers who have complained about tickets taking multiple days to be resolved, however there are so few, I imagine that they were isolated incidents. I think it’s safe to say the customer reviews about eHost are positive.

Idea Host has very simple plans to suit your needs. This comes with a few advantages as well as a few disadvantages. Idea Host seems to be limited on their packages but, if you are after basic needs, they definitely have you covered at a fair price. If you are looking for something a little more customizable or plan on future expansion, you’ll notice that the price quickly jumps. The biggest issue is that you need to plan and decide if you need these options upfront. They do not offer upgrade options so if you need to change to a VPS server down the road when your blog goes viral, you’ll have to find new hosting, which can cost you transfer fees etc. Their pricing is simple and affordable but by no means the cheapest. If you are looking for a user-friendly interface with very promising uptime, Idea Host has you covered. If you are looking for something a little more customizable with a comparable price, you might want to take a look at Bluehost for your web hosting needs.

Idea Host has only been around for about 2 years so the reviews are fairly new. They are a very motivated and excited company looking to make their mark in the web hosting game. The reviews are pretty much the same across the board and explain a lot of benefits from the newer hosting company. This is why they rank so high with us here at ReviewsZone. Customers who need a hosting company to simply provide them with a domain and eCommerce options or a simple blog page- have found a happy home with Idea Host. The only drawback that I’ve been able to find, based on actual customer reviews, is the limited upgrade options. The price is comparable with competitors, uptime and load speeds are great, but customers seem to be limited with growth options. This may be a deal breaker if you plan on taking over the internet down the line. Customer service reports reveal excellent support available 24/7. With a little more time to grow, I believe Idea Host may become one of the frontrunners in the web hosting business.

iPage‘s promotional pricing makes them a very attractive option for people with a limited budget. I also appreciate the consistent pricing regardless of contract length (minimum of 12 months). Unfortunately, when the promotional pricing ends, you’re looking at a 350% jump to $8.99 a month from the previous price of only $1.99.

You won’t have any trouble finding reviews for iPage. They are one of the most popular hosting services, which translates to lots of reviews. The promotional pricing is great and iPage is great for people with simple websites. The uptime and load speeds are a consistant sore spot for reviewers while the refund policy is something that many people are pleasantly surprised by. They will refund you all the remaining money from the time on your contract that you don’t use. The customer service is generally praised as being better than expected for what you are paying. Overall, the service provided by iPage is consistently more positive than negative. Users seem happy with the price, customer service, and features they get. Most customers are willing to recommend their services, as affordability and ease of use are their highest priorities. If these are important to you, then you may be adequately satisfied with iPage as your web host.

As you may understand by now Fat Cow hosting is a very reliable service with a lot of features. So what’s the catch? Well Fat Cow is owned by Endurance International Group. The giant conglomerate owns many hosting companies and I feel that you can get the same reliability and speed for a lower cost from one of their other companies. The initial cost is a little high at $3.15/month but if you’re using WordPress, that number climbs. If you want to incorporate some features (they have a lot), the number climbs higher. A lot of reviews stated that after a few years of using Fat Cow’s services, the cost went up well over 4x. This is the biggest drawback with Fat Cow. If you plan on growing into a large operation, this is something that may get costly. The reliability does help to justify the higher price that comes with Fat Cow.

One thing Fat Cow is not lacking in, is their customer reviews. Fat Cow has been around for almost 20 years now. They have had more than enough time to make an impact on the market. They have proven, and customers have confirmed, their brick house reliability. Customer testimonials are pretty inconsistent. While they rank high with reliability and features, they fall very short with support and price. Some customers have claimed to have waited weeks for any sort of resolution. Other customers say that they have had issues with more technical situations actually stumping the technical support. I have found that if you have basic needs for a simple website, the customer support is fast and helpful. Many of the Fat Cow testimonials talk about the price escalating over time way past the industry standard. I dug into this a little more and it looks like features that were necessary for growth were added causing the rise in pricing. This is to be expected with most hosting companies.

HostGator has 7 different plans you can chose from and the price is pretty standard for the industry. But, is the product worth the price? Here’s what I’ve discovered by meticulously going over the details of all of their plans and the add-ons they have to offer. Starting at only $2.78, the initial basic plan price is very impressive. But for the quality and service you get for that price, you start to understand why it’s so cheap. If you do want to step up to a more quality plan with better uptime and load speeds, the cost rises more quickly than you’d expect. If you need to unlock all of the features HostGator has to offer, you just might experience a little sticker shock.

The reviews and testimonials are probably the biggest red flag with HostGator. A lot of customers have reported less than stellar customer service and ticket response time. If you are running an eCommerce based website, you know that time means money. Some reports have shown that HostGator has taken up to a week or longer to respond to a ticket. This can cost your business thousands of dollars or more! Sub-par customer service paired with a lower than the industry standard uptime can be disastrous. HostGator has vastly improved in the last year and reports show that they will continue to do so over the next few years. The reviews and testimonials are 55% negative across the board. For being one of the top 10 hosting companies, this is simply unacceptable. Keep in mind, though, the improvements they have made are already easing customers worries. Give them a little time and HostGator could show their true potential.

At a basic package price starting at $3.95, JustHost is by no means the cheapest on the market. In fact they end up on the pricy side of similar companies offering the same benefits. Many users state that the prices continually rise, especially if you decide to implement any of their many features. Using WordPress raises the cost as well. A few years ago, this price might have been justified but these days, where competition in the hosting market is everywhere, you have to meet all the users needs at a fair price. JustHost just doesn’t measure up at this price.

JustHost has been in the game for a while and user reviews and testimonials used to be very consistent and very positive. Uptime, customer service/support and features were something that attracted many users, but recently things have changed. The majority of user reviews and testimonials from about 2-3 years ago have gone from being positive to rather negative. Customers have seen a decline in customer support as well as a drop in uptime. The features are still there and they are awesome. In fact nobody has really anything bad to say regarding the amount of features you do get when you decide to go with JustHost for your hosting needs. Just hope you never run into a technical issue because you might be up the creek without a paddle. As far as uptime, customers have noticed a steady decline over the last 2 years and there is no change in sight.