My Review of HostHero Cloud Hosting

I have been reading web hosting reviews of some well known web hosting providers lately just to see what they have to offer.  There are thousands of reviews out there giving glowing reviews and you’ll find some negative feedback as well.  I noticed that the reviews I came across do not shed much light when it comes to the inner workings of what is actually offered and available as everyones hosting requirements differ.

Personally, I have been with my current hosting provider for quite some time now and have been a very happy client and feel the need to post a more in-depth review that offers a lot more insight on what is offered and experienced throughout the years of hosting with them.

My goal of this review is to provide you with an honest detailed account of what I experienced and what HostHero has to offer.

This review is primarily to provide a you with information on the different hosting plans offered at HostHero and my experience with them over the past 7 years.   Lets get to it!

Canadian Web Hosting Company

HostHero.com is a Canadian Web Hosting provider based out of Toronto that provides Cloud Hosting solutions. HostHero prides themselves as being Canadian and do not outsource any of their avenues.They offer email, live chat and phone support to their clients from their Toronto based offices. This is a bonus for me as I myself am a proud Canadian and like to keep things local!

HostHero will transfer your website for you free of charge from your current hosting provider.  If you’re worried about the migration process you can reach out to them and they’ll explain how it works.

Tip:  When signing up for a 1 year term or longer and you wish to keep your domain name provide them with the EPP code (Domain Name Transfer Code) and they will transfer your domain name over to them free of charge making that your “Free Domain Name” that will remain free for as long as you’re with them!

“Cloud” based hosting differs from other providers as it ensured an overall improvement in performance, reliability and security and being hosted on the latest hardware which is what most of us is striving for!

Cheap Hosting Plans for Businesses

HostHero offers a range of hosting solutions from Shared to VPS to Dedicated servers all of which can meet almost everyones requirements however there is more room more and they tend to introduce new plans and services often which is always a welcomed surprise.

Below are the Shared plans available:

Starter Cloud Plan – $3.95/month

Business Cloud Plan – $7.95/month

Premium Cloud Plan – $15.95/month

The Starter Cloud Plan is the most affordable plan available at $3.95/month which should meet anyones basic hosting needs and comes with 512mb of ram with a Guaranteed Disk I/O of 512kbps connection and allows for 15 processes.

The Business Cloud Plan is  the next plan up and the “most popular” plan according to them which is designed for Businesses and Medium sized sites (Be it an e-commerce site or a video site etc). and comes with 512mb of ram with a guaranteed disk I/O of 1024kbps connection which allows 15 processes.

The Premium Cloud Plan which is their fastest Shared hosting solution available and is designed for big busy sites (social networking/video or just a generally busy site) and comes with 786mb of ram with a guaranteed I/O of 2048kbps connection and allows for 20 processes.

All this information i provided now is available on their Hosting Plan Comparison Page

Now that we covered the basics of what the difference is between the Shared plans lets go into what you can expect from the hosting plan and what ‘s included.

All Shared plans allow you create an unlimited amount of addon domains/subdomains/mail accounts/FTP Accounts and MySQL databases etc (Again this information is provided in their Comparison page mentioned above) and also has Softaculous and as well as RVSite Builder which is a well known and widely used site builder.

Softaculous is a script installer that allows you to install well over 180+ scripts that range from WordPress to forums to social networking and video scripts and tons more within seconds with a single click!

RVSiteBuilder is a website Builder which comes with hundreds of templates if you feel like creating and designing your website(s).

I have multiple hosting plans with HostHero (Shared and VPS) and have used both Softaculous and RVsiteBuilder.  I’d recommend them to anyone who wants a professional looking website up in no time. Having two hosting plans with HostHero also gives me the ability to provide you with feedback on two different hosting solutions.

All Shared Hosting plans have the ability to switch between PHP versions instantly (PHP 5.2/5.3/5.4/5.5/5.6/7.0/7.1 and 7.2) 7.2 being the latest and stabilized version. Running PHP 7 on your sites is important as it offers an overall improvement in performance and security.

Free Domain Name For Life

Before moving on to the other plans and services offered through HosthHero, I would just like to note that the Shared Hosting plan prices mentioned on their site ($3.95/$7.95 and $15.95/month) are for the 3 year term. This is standard as most hosting providers tend to offer discounts on longer billing cycles. That being said, HostHero is one of few hosting providers that offer a “FREE domain for Life!” when signing up for a 1 year term or longer. This does not mean that the domain name is free for as long as you live but free for as long as you’re with them and if you do decide to leave you can take your domain name with you!  Good news for me as they have been renewing my domain name close to 7 years now free of charge!

I think I’ve covered the Shared plans now lets move on to their VPS plans available.

There are a total of 5 VPS plans available all of which are running cPanel and comes with root access and Unlimited bandwidth.  These are cloud hosting VPS solutions with full redundancy.

VPS Plans and Pricing

VPS-20 – $49.95/month

20GBs of disk space and 512mbs of ram.

VPS- 50 – $69.95/month

50GBs of disk space and 1GB of ram

VPS-75 – $89.95/month

75GBs of disk space and 1.5GBs of ram

VPS-100 – $110.95/month

100GBs of disk space and 2GBs of ram

VPS-150 – $149.95/month

150GBs of disk space and 3GBs of ram

Being on a VPS plan does give you the freedom to do pretty much anything you wish as these plans are not hosted in a Shared hosting environment. You can host all sorts of sites on a VPS plan with the ability to install/compile any software you need to ensure your site is run smoothly.  You can also host multiple websites on a VPS.

I run a few businesses myself and have the VPS-100 plan which I have tweaked to suite my unique requirements (Such as added disk space/MuliPHP selector and a few custom compiles). VPS plans are not managed however you can always contact support whenever you need assistance.

For e-commerce websites a SSL certificate is required for added security (encrypted connect with the green padlock).  Hosthero has that covered as SSL certificates are available as an addon service for $79.95/year or $130/2 years that covers a single domain name. You can also install a SSL certificate purchased from a third party.

Here are all of the HostHero Account Addons services.

There are quite a few addon services available which I personally have subscribed to as well so let me give you some first hand experience/insight.

I opted for the Whois Privacy which limits the amount of information provided when someone does a Whois Lookup on my domain name and to avoid being contacted by solicitors.

I also subscribed to their Automated Website Backup service where my entire account is backed up every night and it gives me the ability to restore a single file/folder or entire account as far back as 5 days or anywhere in between (Be it 12 hours or 3 days)..this is useful for when mistakes are made. Yes I can setup automated Backups on my VPS as well however as you may know backups consume disk space which is why I opted for this addon service – Backups are kept on an off-site server.

HostHero Support Review

Now let me address the most important aspect of any Web Hosting Provider – Their Support!

I have already mentioned the fact that HostHero does not outsource any of their support which is awesome since I’m in Canada as well.

Ticket Support is 24/7 365 days a year and the ticket response times is around 15 minutes which is impressive. There have been some times where my tickets get escalated and require more attention (Especially on a VPS) which is understandable.

Live Chat is also available 24/7 and is great when you need a quick solution in an urgent situation.

Phone Support is available from 9am to 5pm week days and is sometimes a real pleasure to converse with a real person that gets to know you over time and form a bond with! HostHero seems to be growing quite rapidly but there is a sense of personal attention which you won’t find with other hosts.

With everything that I have said let me just inform everyone that this review I just wrote is from my own free will and I think that HostHero deserves the kudos for all the hard work and dedication it has shown their clients throughout the years and wish them the best for the future!

Let me end this by saying that HostHero is not for everyone, they don’t offer Windows based hosting but can meet almost everyone’s hosting needs. I have recommended these guys to all my friends and family and will continue to do so.