HostNine is a US-based web hosting supplier which entered the market in 2006 and has since opened a number of information facilities in numerous nations throughout the three continents. During this time they’ve been providing a variety of internet hosting companies, together with shared, reseller, cloud VPS and dedicated server options. Beyond what’s written above, discovering related details about the corporate felt like full-time detective work.
HostNine’s major web site doesn’t provide a lot past the gorgeous widespread self-promotional propaganda, so the subsequent logical step was to see what we are able to discover about them on social networks. Although they’ve LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts, the final two haven’t been up to date for fairly a while. Their Twitter (which appears deserted since 2019) gave us a trigger for concern, significantly concerning their buyer help companies, which didn’t appear to reside as much as expectations of a lot of customers. There have been a number of mentions of extended downtime as effectively, so that you higher remember to give this an additional thought.
It seems that HostNine was a comparatively small and privately-owned firm using 10-15 individuals till they have been picked up by EIG (Endurance International Group) in 2012. EIG has been within the enterprise since 1997 and has since then acquired a large number of smaller corporations which later grew to become massive manufacturers (Bluehost, Hostgator, HostMonster, JustHost and plenty of extra).
HostNine’s major web site, though fairly plain at first look, feels trendy in design and is intuitive and simple to make use of, which is at all times worthy of reward. The areas of HostNine’s information facilities could be seen on the backside of promoted internet hosting plans: the USA, the UK, Singapore, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands.
While trying to find HostNine’s official weblog, the one factor we discovered was a dated-looking weblog that has been gathering mud since January 2015. It incorporates a few respectable straight-to-the-point written tutorials, although.
Plans and pricing
There are three ranges of plans for every internet hosting sort HostNine gives. Shared internet hosting plans are labelled as: Personal, Business and Enterprise, whereas the opposite sorts are merely tagged with numbers (the place a bigger quantity signifies a extra premium plan). The starter plan (labelled as Personal) goes for $10.03 for a month and contains limitless storage and unmetered bandwidth. However, it excludes free area (it would value you extra $15 for a yr), free SSL certificate (it would take one other $39.99) and the one accessible information middle is within the USA.
While least expensive, the “Personal” plan is kind of restricted and doesn’t provide a lot to those that are simply beginning to create their first web sites. On a optimistic notice, with HostNine there is no such thing as a worth hike after the renewal of your internet hosting plan. Therefore, at the very least when pricing is anxious, what you see is what you’ll get, now or ever.
If you select HostNine’s plan for at the very least a yr, you’ll get a 45-day money-back assure, which is a bit longer than regular.
When it involves fee strategies, HostNine helps credit score/debit playing cards and PayPal.
Ease of use
Selecting a plan with HostNine is kind of easy, since all of them are introduced side-by-side with their options, pricing for add-ons, in addition to areas of all accessible information facilities. If you wish to study a bit extra concerning the plan earlier than making a call, there may be an possibility “See all…” for every internet hosting sort. This will inform you about extra options (resembling management panel and accessible functions) and variations in costs relying on the billing cycle.
After this you’ll must register a brand new area (a free one is included in additional expensive plans for shared internet hosting and all reseller internet hosting plans) or switch an outdated one, offered you’ve it. The two accessible add-ons are: Google AdWords (with $100 price of free credit score) and Priority Support (which is able to make your tickets a precedence for $15 monthly).
To be completely trustworthy, paying $15 each single month simply so you will get the help you want rapidly sufficient doesn’t sound like such a fantastic deal. We can’t assist however assume that customers who complained about HostNine’s buyer help presumably didn’t take that overpriced ad-on. Even the ID Protection (security for the non-public data and discount of spam to the inbox) will value an additional $12.95, although this time for a yr.
After checking all particulars concerning the buy, you’ll have to supply: your title, e-mail, telephone quantity, road deal with, metropolis and state. Those who’re opening an account on behalf of the corporate are required to supply extra VAT data. After this, you’ll create a password, add a fee methodology, select if you wish to be a part of the mailing listing, and proceed to checkout.
After having a look at HostNine’s phrases and circumstances, we seen a small (however noteworthy) element concerning the 99.9% uptime assure. For each 60 minutes of downtime, clients will get in the future’s price of credit score on their HostNine’s account as an apology.
Since HostNine gives its customers with a cPanel and WHM management panel along with Softaculous one-click app-installer, a whole bunch of open-source functions and CMSs will likely be at your disposal very quickly.
Speed and expertise
On the query “Why HostNine?” they offer us a number of causes and one in every of them was associated to their efficiency, the place they declare that every of their information facilities gives its customers “world-class community speeds and reliability”. After witnessing that HostNine certainly is aware of the right way to “discuss the discuss”, we needed to examine in the event that they “stroll the stroll” as effectively.
A repeated GTmetrix pace check on HostNine’s major web site gave us a number of causes to query their guarantees. With the common results of 8.1 seconds, the time it took to totally load the web page was 8.2. This could also be a mere millisecond longer, however we’ve got to confess that it leaves no impression of “world-class” pace. Additionally, loading the web page took 114 requests, which doesn’t look excellent compared to the common of 87. To conclude the check, GTmetrix ranked the web site’s pace efficiency with an F (46%).
However, an uptime check by UptimeRobot that ran on HostNine’s major web site for greater than a month confirmed extra uplifting outcomes. During the recorded time there was no proof of downtime and merely one main oscillation in response time. Although one month isn’t consultant of an entire yr, these outcomes do present promise.
Support
HostNine gives numerous sorts of buyer help together with: e-mail, ticket, reside chat and phone. However, the latter one is reserved for the US residents and made accessible solely throughout the working hours. All different types of help must be accessible round the clock.
If you resolve to contact HostNine‘s group by choosing the corresponding possibility (that’s “Contact Us”) on the touchdown web page, you’ll be introduced with their knowledgebase. At first look it appears completely different in type from the web site and a bit old style, however it’s effectively outfitted with a number of hundred articles divided into completely different classes. Some of those are fairly detailed, however others will offer you probably the most fundamental directions sorted by ordinal numbers. Both seem useful sufficient, although.
Judging by the feedback of dissatisfied customers on social networks, reside chat is the weakest hyperlink of HostNine‘s buyer help. However, our personal expertise was extra optimistic than anticipated. We received our reply in lower than half-hour and couldn’t discover something in it price complaining about.
The competitors
Similarly to HostNine, StableHost is one other US-based host with an honest number of hosting-related merchandise, options and choices to select from. Although each of them are usually on the costly aspect in comparison with their competitors, when starter plans are at play, StableHost gives them at budget-friendly costs and throws in a SiteBuilder as a bonus.
Despite being a part of the identical umbrella firm (EIG), Hostgator and HostNine don’t share a “mode-of-operation”. Hostgator takes an effort to supply the freshmen with all the required instruments with out making them really feel like they’ve paid a king’s ransom. At the opposite finish, HostNine would not shy from (over)charging them for each single factor, though, to be truthful, in a commendable and clear manner.
Another fellow EIG model, Bluehost, is without doubt one of the greatest gamers within the website hosting business at the moment and, as anticipated, is ready to provide its customers extra aggressive costs than HostNine. If this isn’t sufficient to persuade you, Bluehost features a free area in all of its plans (for the primary yr) in addition to free CDN and an SSL certificates.
Verio and HostNine are considerably related when pricing is anxious, since each are unafraid to cost extra for his or her companies than most hosts. However, HostNine gives its clients with business commonplace cPanel, whereas Verio gives a plain-looking management panel which isn’t user-friendly sufficient, particularly as compared.
Final verdict
HostNine is a wonderfully succesful host which gives sufficient internet hosting choices, options and add-ons to satisfy the wants of most customers, irrespective of how demanding their companies are. Unfortunately, though it belongs to the identical group as Bluehost and Hostgator, HostNine fails to supply equal worth for cash on the subject of small enterprise homeowners. Truth be informed, HostNine is much from a foul host, however it doesn’t stand out a lot amongst different corporations.
