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Hostwinds Review: The Right Web Hosting Solution for You?

Sezmi

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7.0 Out Of 10

Hostwinds, a US-based independent web hosting company, has been in existence since 2010. They offer affordable pricing and great customer service.

A lot of readers have emailed me to ask for my opinion on Hostwinds. I decided to take on a small project.

Here is my Hostwinds review – based on my customer experience.

Hostwinds Pricing

* Prices per month for a 36 month subscription

View Hostwinds’ Current Plans and Pricing

Hostwinds Alternatives

Here’s how Hostwinds compares to the top web hosts I have used as a consultant or customer.

HostGator Review

Rating

9.0/10

Uptime Guarantee

Yes

Migration is free

Yes

Promotion

Get 65% Off

Bluehost Review

Rating

9.5/10

Uptime Guarantee

No

Migration is free

Yes

Promotion

Starting At $2.95/mo

Hostinger Review

Rating

8.0/10

Uptime Guarantee

Yes

Migration is free

Yes

Promotion

Starting At $1.39/mo

The Best Web Hosting

Hostwinds vs. HostGator

There are some key differences between Hostwinds and . HostGator, which is much larger than Endurance’s Houston or Utah data centers, operates from these locations. They offer very competitive upfront pricing and are comparable to Hostwinds.

HostGator is more affordable than other hosting services. Most site owners would prefer HostGator to others. HostGator is where I host most of my personal projects.

Hostwinds vs. Bluehost

Bluehost, like HostGator, is also a larger competitor. They are the largest hosting company. Pre-2015, they had a similar pricing structure to Hostwinds. Bluehost has changed its pricing plans and is now “upmarket.” Hostwinds offers more basic features and raw pricing. Bluehost is better. Bluehost is a good choice if you want better quality, more options, and a well-respected brand.

Hostwinds vs. GoDaddy

GoDaddy has become the industry’s brand, even though they are not a hosting company but a domain registry. Although they have made significant improvements in web hosting since 2013, their main selling point is the deeply discounted introductory pricing. Hostwinds can’t even match that price. GoDaddy is the best choice if you want to save money and have similar features with a company that has a good reputation. GoDaddy is my choice between Hostwinds and GoDaddy.

Hostwinds vs. Siteground

SiteGround has been one of the fastest growing independent hosting providers. They are based in Bulgaria and have better access to data centers than Hostwinds. Hostwinds has unlimited storage and a lower price. This is a great option if you are looking to save money and keep a lot more files. SiteGround, a more established company, offers better performance and a higher price.

Hostwinds vs. InMotion Hosting

InMotion hosting is one the fastest-growing and most popular hosting providers. They offer a wide range of hosting services. This website uses InMotion’s VPS server. Although they are more expensive than Hostwinds’ special pricing, they offer a better product in every way. InMotion also offers shared hosting plans for beginners under the Web Hosting Hub brand. Although they are more costly than Hostwinds, they offer a better product and more options within their plans. InMotion hosting is available.

The pros of Hostwinds hosting

Hostwinds reviews are plentiful online. Most of them include user-generated reviews that are based on personal experience and anecdotes. This is fine, but I prefer a different approach. There is no “best” web host, as I have stated in my best Web Hosting reviews. Based on your needs, budget, experience, and expertise, the “best” web host is the one that will work best for you. These are the benefits (and disadvantages) of Hostwinds.

Simple Plan Structure

It can be difficult to choose a hosting plan depending on which company you are dealing with. Hostwinds is known for their simple plan structure.

There are three levels to choose from: Advanced, Basic, and Ultimate

There is only one difference between the three plans: the number of domains that you receive. All plans come with unlimited bandwidth and disk space, which is a big plus. There are also a lot of bonus features.

There are some downsides to this arrangement (which I’ll get into in a moment), but Hostwinds’ simplicity is an incredibly strong selling point.

Support channels

As I mentioned in my top web host list, it is impossible to say whether a company offers exceptional or terrible customer service to each customer. It is difficult to tell if a customer is dealing with one person who is amazing or one that is terrible, or if the company’s overall culture.

Hostwinds customer service representatives have been difficult to deal with. They were responsive and helpful when we reached them regarding an issue with WordPress being installed on a domain that had been transferred.

This is not anecdotal, but they are available 24/7 via multiple support channels, including email, tickets and chat. All their support channels are easy to find and use.

This support channel range is valuable and helps you stand out from the rest of your competitors in the budget market, such as Namecheap Web Hosting, Host and iPage.

They will also check in with you once you start looking at pricing plans. This is a great bonus feature for those who are new to hosting and want to know how to find the best fit.

Cons of Hostwinds

Hostwinds is just like any other web host. You can find many Hostwinds complaints online. There are many valid complaints about Hostwinds. Some are just anecdotal. These are some of the cons I encountered while using Hostwinds as a hosting provider.

Credibility gap

Hostwinds’ credibility gap is one of their biggest flaws. It is the discrepancy between what they claim about themselves and what actually is true.

There are many “fly-by-night” hosting companies out there that can put customers in bad situations when things go south. A track record and credibility from third-parties are essential for any hosting company looking to enter the business market. This usually comes from events, awards and testimonials.

Hostwinds appears to be only trying to establish credibility with a few badges taken from pay-to play review websites.

This is a fine idea on the surface, but it gets a little strange when you look deeper.

Hostwinds doesn’t really have much information about their company anywhere, not even in well-known databases or tech company write ups.

Their About page is very generic. They don’t have any press or company stories. There are no people or events. Even their legal page has conflicting addresses.

It all seems a little strange and you start to wonder if Hostwinds is really credible.

Here’s the truth. They are a stable, real company. They most likely are. This is because they seem to be lacking in effort. Their industry is well-known, and I am curious about their culture and how it translates into support & performance.

Plan Differentiation + Pricing

Hostwinds plan simplicity, as I said earlier, is a big pro. All plans have a discount at the time I wrote this. You can also renew at a lower rate. Each package comes with certain features, and each price corresponds to the associated price.

The only thing that makes the features different is the price. The number of domains that you can get.

Simple, right?

It is easy to understand, and it is a simple way to get people who want more resources to pay more.

The FAQs also have this:

This raises red flags about the price you are paying and how load balanced they are. Each shared hosting company must balance performance across all accounts. Shared hosting means that the server is…shared. It is difficult to provide each account with the resources they require without restricting the access of other accounts. However, it is possible to be open about what your limits are.

Hosting companies often limit disk space, databases and domains to limit accounts. Hostwinds uses domains to limit resources, but they also appear to use other methods to dole out resources. They seem to offer two types of shared hosting. It’s all confusing. This is not a problem in and of themselves, but it does impede their main advantage.

Things get even more complicated when you go to and actually purchase a Plan. Take a look at what happened when we tried signing up for the Basic plan.

It turns out that the advertised pricing is only valid for the 12-month plan. There doesn’t appear to be any trial period. Once you commit, it’s done.

You can also get web hosting cloud backups as an automatic feature, which can be a little annoying. This is often offered for free by companies such as InMotion.

There isn’t much information about domains being only available to those who have signed up for the 12-month+ plan. After completing the entire sign-up process, we realized that the free domain could not be obtained because we had not signed up for the 12-month plan. Although it could have been user error I didn’t notice anything when I signed up.

And so it goes again. Hosting returns is hard math. Hostwinds is not the only one who does this. However, with their “remarkably low price “…” positioning, they leave much to be desired for their limitations.

This is not to say that Hostwinds pricing is bad per se… but there are many other hosts that offer money-back guarantees, like InMotion or DreamHost. If you don’t care about unlimited disk space you can get a better price elsewhere.

Limited Data Centers

A good hosting server will not only host your website files but also deliver them every time a visitor visits your domain address.

There are many factors that affect how fast your website loads. It is possible to have the fastest server on the planet and still have a slow website because of issues on your side. You want to make sure your server is fast enough that you can focus on your side of things.

Server location is one of the factors that can impact performance. Multiple server locations allow website owners to select the nearest location to their customers so that their website loads faster.

This doesn’t really matter if all your customers live in the US.

This setup is especially helpful if you’re in Africa, Asia or Australia. It’s something Hostwinds does not have.

They cover the US and Western Europe, but that’s all. It doesn’t really matter if you are not an ex-US. However, if you’re ex-US it can be a disadvantage.

Performance is average

A good hosting server will not only host your website files but also deliver them every time a visitor visits your domain address.

There are many factors that affect how fast your website loads. It is possible to have the fastest server on the planet and still have a slow website because of issues on your side. You want to make sure your server is fast enough that you can focus on your side of things.

TTFB, or Time To First Byte is one of the best measures for approximating speed. Network engineers can be very picky about the details. If you know exactly what kind of website you have, you can request detailed allocated specifications. With my hosting reviews, I aim to give you a summary of the tradeoffs that can be used to make the right decision for your website.

Here’s what their data center did with my website after I set it up using a fresh WordPress install.

0.9s for TTFB aren’t bad, but they’re not the best I’ve ever seen. Hostwinds may not be the most efficient, but it isn’t the worst. You might consider looking elsewhere if you are looking for better performance or a more complicated website.

Conclusion

Hostwinds hosting was overall disappointing. Although their plans are straightforward and provide good features, I felt uneasy about the lack of credibility. There were some things that I didn’t like about the entire process.

Hostwinds is a simple plan that provides unlimited bandwidth and storage.

View Hostwinds’ current plans & pricing

InMotion hosting is a shared hosting company that offers similar pricing and better products. If you prefer to pay monthly, you can also visit HostGator.