8. Hostroute Hosting Review

Posted on February 23, 2008
Filed Under business web hosting, e-commerce web host, Hostroute Web Hosting, webhosting reviews, web hosting review, web hosting, web hosting company, web host |

Click the following to go directly to the Hostroute Web Hosting Site 

Hostroute is a company I actually used for several years, and they have a basically good, solid hosting program.  They have several options, including a five site (host 5 different domain names) option.  For the purposes of this review, I didn’t even consider their “Starter” or “Basic” hosting package, but looked at their Bronze and Five Website packages.  In fact, they promote their Basic package on their home page, and you only find out about the slightly lower priced Starter package when you go to choose a plan.  It and the Basic plans both lacked so many basic features important to a business hosting plan, like Spam Assasin, Webmail and many useful scripts, that I didn’t include them. 

The three main reasons I switched my accounts over from Hostroute were support, tools and resources, and price.  I know I’ve said price isn’t important, when you get a great, easy to use web hosting package with excellent support behind it.  However, when a web hosting company doesn’t give me everything I need, price does become a factor.  There is simply no need to pay more for less!  Lets look at these issues one at a time.

1. Support at Hostroute was adequate, and certainly much better than at several of the really cheap hosts that aren’t even included in these reviews.  Yes, I’ve made the mistake of trying some really cheap web hosts, but I’ve learned my lesson.  My main problems with their support were response time (varied a lot, from reasonably prompt to dead slow), and the fact that a few issues that were apparently resolved, turned out to be still a problem.  Plus, they don’t offer phone or chat support.  This caused me to waste a lot of time, until I figured out the problem was with their tech support not having done what they said they had done.
2. Their scripts library is adequate, but many of the tools I could have used (like an online web site builder, and different types of blog scripts) just weren’t included.  There are no advertising, SEO or additional bonuses offered.
3. For the money, even the Five Site deal, at $180 a year, is a bit steep for the tools and support that they provide

Now, even though they only made number 8 on my rankings, I don’t want you to think this is a terrible web host.  If one of the ones higher on my rankings list only lets you host 3 or 4 site for their lowest priced offering, and you already have 5 sites built and want to switch hosts, you could definitely do much worse than Hostroute.  They have a 99.9% uptime guarantee (pretty accurate, from my experience) and offer a 30 day money back guarantee. 

Make sure you consider that you’re going to have to buy or get software to build and upload your website, in addition to the hosting costs.  Their lack of a free online site builder is another drawback, and a good WYSIWIG generator to build your website can cost a few hundred dollars, although one of the best FTP software packages (to upload your web site) is FileZilla, which is free.  Here are the basics of the Hostroute web hosting package.  The five site package has basically the same offerings, per site, and is a much better deal.

• Host one or five domain names
• $15 per domain name through their affiliate, Nameroute - none free
• 24/7 email ticket support (no phone or chat support)
• Extensive FAQ and searchable support database
• cPanel 11 on Linux (Unix) based servers
• 99.9% uptime guarantee (excellent)
• 30 day Money Back Guarantee
• 500 MB web space
• 10 GB data transfer (20 GB per domain, on 5 Site plan) 
•  100 email accounts
• 5 MySQL databases (adequate) (10 per domain on 5 Site plan)
• Somewhat limited script library does include blog, forum, mailing lists, shopping cart.  All of the essentials, but not much choice.
• Cost - $9.98 a month or $98 a year for one domain - 5 domains for $180 a year

If you’re a somewhat experienced webmaster, and don’t need any help building your sites, and only occasional help in maintaining them, then Hostroute offers a reliable, stable web hosting program for a decent price, especially with the 5 Site plan.  If you think you’re going to need a bit of help building and maintaining your website, there are probably better options.  To find out more, go to Hostroute Web Hosting.

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