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Products and Services: |
9 / 10 |
| Reliability: |
10 / 10 |
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| Control Panel: | 8 / 10 | |
| Customer Service: | 10 / 10 | |
| Price and Value: | 7 / 10 | |
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| Overall Score: |
88% |
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Company Profile: Hostway are one of the top-five Web hosting companies in the world, fulfilling the needs of over 600,000 consumers and businesses worldwide every day. Hostway have operations in the UK, US, Germany, Holland, Korea, Australia and Canada, and have a strong reputation as a full-service web host, specialising in shared web hosting, dedicated server management and domain name registration. Year Established: 1996 Number of Employees: 60 Number of Accounts: 600,000+
Mission Statement: “It is our mission to offer industry-leading web hosting services and tools, allied to superior customer support. Our aim is to provide you with the online capabilities of larger corporations without the burdensome infrastructure, so that you can broaden your customer reach and achieve your own particular goals online. Open, honest communications with our customers and clear, affordable pricing are also distinguishing characteristics of the way we do business.”
Awards: Hostway continue to push forward the standard for excellence in web hosting. As a worldwide leader in the industry, they have been accredited with a number of awards and recognition for their continued efforts to provide top quality service to their customers. Recent awards include Best Customer Service 2007, Best Hosting Company 2007 and Number 1 Shared Hosting and Ecommerce Provider 2007.
Products and Services: Included in Hostway’s product offerings, you’ll find domain name registration, shared and dedicated solutions, ecommerce plans, managed services, plus valuable site promotion and analysis tools. Web Hosting: Hostway offers a varied choice of managed hosting services ranging from Windows and Linux based shared hosting plans, to complete dedicated server and Enterprise managed solutions. All packages have varying degrees of storage and bandwidth, and each comes with Hostway's comprehensive site-design tool, and all but the most basic bundle offers an e-commerce option. Though Hostway's packages cost a few pounds more (and provide a bit less storage and bandwidth) than those of its low-cost and no-cost competitors, the added features and the excellent service and support make sense for those who want more than a mere warehouse for their website. Hostway offers five different Web hosting packages; Plans:
All but the Bronze plan supply an e-commerce option and the opportunity to host your site on a Windows server (at an additional cost). Moreover, the Gold, Gold Plus and Platinum plans offer MySQL database and PHP support. For companies with heavy-duty data-storage and bandwidth needs, Hostway also offers dedicated hosting. The Hostway site-design tool, Site-Builder, impressed us with plenty of features and design choices, in an easy-to-understand format. You start by picking a template from the dozens available, which are all categorised by industry. You can then alter the template's colour, graphics, text, and arrangement of items. Finally, you can choose several bonus features for your site, such as a flash intro page, a guestbook, and a photo album. More expensive packages include an even more full-featured version of Site-Builder, which lets you build user forums, maps, and other elements into your site. Hostway protects your finished masterpiece with e-mail aliases and automatic backupsDomains: With almost 10 years experience registering domain names, Hostway now offers over 100 top-level domains and a list of optional add-on services. The general registration process is efficient, professional and very fast, especially in comparison to other providers. The pricing is also very reasonable. Expect to pay £6.95 for a .co.uk (2 year registration), and £7.95 for a .com (1 year registration) Hostway also offer a ‘bulk domain’ registration box, making life very easy should you wish to register an unlimited amount of domains at one time. Servers: Hostway provides both managed and unmanaged dedicated servers, as well as several VPS offerings. Hostway’s dedicated servers are a must if you need a highly secure, continually reliable server for complicated or high traffic sites. Choose from a root server, if you need to have full access, or a managed server, if you want to have all the convenience of a shared server but need a little technical support. Managed Servers feature 100% systems administration by Hostway, allowing you to efficiently manage a web server and the websites hosted on it, while bypassing the arduous task of network and systems administration. Hostway's Virtual Private Servers are particularly applicable for hosting resellers, online application developers, high bandwidth users and gaming server users, as they offer all the performance and functionality of a dedicated server, but at prices akin to shared hosting. VPS are available with either root access or using Plesk from SwSoft - Prices starts form as low as £39.95 per month - 24 hour phone and email support and a 30 day money back guarantee. Plans:
E-Commerce Solutions: Hostway provides Ecommerce web hosting solutions for thousands of customers, large and small. All hosting plans that have Ecommerce enabled feature Merchant Manager, Hostway’s fully customisable shopping cart system and store administrator that enables you to create a professional online store in record time. As well as Merchant Manager, each offering includes multiple MySQL database functionality, more than ample disk space, traffic, and email allowances, along with a host of other additional features. Hostway offers 3 main ecommerce solutions;
As is expected, the fundamental difference between the plans is the amount of included bandwidth, disk space and email accounts. The Gold plan offers adequate disk space for a basic start-up website and sufficient site management tools, including a control panel that even the most novice users can get the hang of in a matter of minutes. You can check your account status, manage your email, add to and upgrade your plan, build and add features to your website, and much more. Hostway’s Platinum plan offers enough web space for a more advanced site, and includes the excellent Urchin Web Analytic Software package as standard, which is among the best pieces of software you're likely to use for analysing your web traffic.
You
can sell any number of products on your site, from just a few items to
thousands. Once you decide how many products you want to sell, you can
pick the plan that best meets your needs. Hostway’s Gold Plan, for
example, lets you list up to 20 products while our Platinum Plan allows
you to list an unlimited number of products. Email: Hostway's standard email plans are ideal for people who just want a reliable, easy-to-use and simple to set up email solution. Hostway offers 2 main plans;
Both solutions are offered with spam and virus protection, 24 hour email and telephone support and 30 Days money back guarantee.
Reliability: If you host with Hostway, one thing you can count on is reliability.
Hostway currently operates state-of-the-art Data Centres located in
Europe, North America and Asia. They are strategically located within
easy reach of primary Internet Backbone hubs, and away from areas that
pose any risk of natural disaster.
The
Data Centres themselves are equipped with ‘best of breed’ security
systems and are under constant surveillance for maximum physical
security. Hostway guarantees 99.9% availability on its internal network between the servers and the connection providers – from our records they seem to be doing a pretty good job.
Control Panel: Hostway currently uses its own bespoke control panel called Site-Control. The interface itself seems mainly geared towards beginners, who will find it very intuitive and less complex than others in the marketplace. More experienced web users may find it a challenge, as it provides a limited degree of control in comparison to other more standard panels. If you happen to host multiple sites with Hostway, you can conveniently manage them through this one single control panel. You can use the control panel to adjust most of the settings on your site(s), and can access the site-design tool to build and publish your website(s); you can then manage the site throughout its life cycle by performing tasks such as creating a database, establishing new e-mail accounts, setting up auto-responders and re-directing your e-mail while you're away. Another couple of welcome features include the ability to view detailed reports on visitors and traffic to your site and the Web-based e-mail client, which lets you check your e-mail from any computer with a Web connection.
Customer Support: Just as Hostway recognise the importance of reliability, they also recognise the impact of customer support - providing 24/7 telephone and email assistance. When you contact Hostway for assistance they are always ready and in most cases able to help you. Skilled and knowledgeable employees are hired to ensure customer support and service is paramount. Hostway free phone lines are open 24/7, and we never encountered a phone queue that lasted longer than five minutes. Even the calls we placed on a Sunday were answered promptly. If you choose to seek out your own answers, you can consult the online FAQ’s and the electronic manual posted on the company's site. The only way Hostway could improve in this area is to offer a live-chat feature through its Web site.
Price and Value: Hostway have developed a wide range of plans to meet the various needs of their customers, all offering good value. The best value is clearly evident in the mid-range and above levels of shared hosting plans. The benefits to these packages are clearly worth the investment. In terms of price, Hostway is expensive in comparison to many other web hosting companies. Further more, it also charges extra for additional features, some of which are offered free by other providers. But although Hostway’s prices seem steep, your primary factor when searching for a good web host should not be price. Yes, price is one factor but you need to take into consideration other factors before deciding. Hostway adds substantial value to its portfolio by providing top class customer service and unrivalled reliability.
Conclusion: In conclusion, Hostway offers a variety of hosting solutions that provide good value to their customers. They provide top-notch customer support, some of the best in the industry, and currently top our reliability and performance rankings. In our opinion, Hostway is one of the most esteemed web hosting solutions providers in the industry today.
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