You’ve come to our page because you’re an ecommerce business owner who is either unhappy with your current hosting service or looking for a new choice for your new store.
In either case, a quick Google search reveals dozens of options, which can be overwhelming—no matter where you stand on the ecommerce experience scale.
That’s why we’re only looking at one web hosting company:
Who’s Hostwinds?
Peter Holden, the founder of Hostwinds, launched the company in 2010. A web development firm employed him as a back-end developer. Frustrated by the difficulties hof transitioning his employer to a new hosting provider, he decided to do it himself, and Hostwinds was born.
Hostwinds is a privately held corporation that claims to have “begun transforming the face of the hosting industry from the beginning with a new set of standards: giving quality hosting services at a fair price.”
Based in Seattle, WA, the company has won multiple customer service awards (see below) and was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest-growing private firms. Not to mention that it was named the #1 Option for Hosting Your Startup Website by Entrepreneur, it was named “one of the finest overall tech products of 2018” by PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice, and Hostwinds was named one of Pinterest’s Top Five Best Affordable Web Hosting Companies.
Isn’t it impressive?
The Hostwinds website provides:
- Quick servers
- Low-cost options
- Uptime is guaranteed at 99.99999 per cent.
- Outstanding client service
It’s also worth mentioning that Hostwinds has three data centres: one in Seattle, one in Dallas, and one in Amsterdam.
That’s a lot of compliments… So, let’s see how well that holds up under investigation!
Hostwinds’s Pros and Cons
Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals, here’s a quick rundown of Hostwinds’ advantages and disadvantages:
Pros
- It’s a multi-award-winning firm.
- They have extremely low prices, especially for newcomers.
- On all of their plans, you have access to many features.
- Discounts are available (at the time of writing)
- Excellent uptime is ensured.
- Their servers are quite fast.
Cons
- Their pricing structure is unnecessarily complex.
- On some hosting plans, SSL is an additional charge.
- Its return policies are subject to certain situations (see terms and conditions)
Hostwinds’s Core Features
Hosting, VPS, Cloud, and Dedicated are the four categories under which Hostwinds splits its features. Within each sub-category, there are different sub-categories and separate sets of components.
Hosting
If you choose this option, you’ll choose between Shared, Business, Reseller, or White Label, each with its pricing structure and set of features.
There are far too many to discuss in detail in this post. However, whichever hosting service you choose, you will undoubtedly benefit from the following features:
- Bandwidth is limitless.
- Disc space is unrestricted.
- A completely free SSL certificate
- Drives based on solid-state technology
- Setup in a flash
- Subdomains are unrestricted.
- Softaculous instals itself
- An unrestricted IP addresses
The White Label option is the lone exception to this rule. This is for anyone who wants to start their own hosting business and offer Hostwinds goods.
VPS
There are four VPS options available to anyone considering it. Then there are multiple price plans and features inside each of these.
The four alternatives are as follows:
- Linux that is managed
- Linux is unmanaged.
- Windows that can be controlled
- Windows that aren’t handled
The following are some of the most commonly shared characteristics:
- Drives based on solid-state technology
- Transferring a website for free
- Snapshots
- Several places
- ISOs made to order
- Firewall for businesses
- Uptime of 99.999 per cent
- 1 Gigabit per second ports
After that, the options you have access to are determined by the pricing plan you choose, with RAM, storage, disc space, data transmission, and bandwidth size varying. However, as you might expect, the more you pay, the more you get.
Cloud
If you choose cloud server hosting, Hostwinds claims that setting up a cloud server takes less than 20 seconds. Again, the capacity of the CPU, storage, RAM, and bandwidth varies depending on which price structure you choose, but popular characteristics include:
- Payment options range from hourly to triennial.
- Full management assistance is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, via live chat, phone, or support tickets (with a real person)
- SSD storage will speed up your server, allowing you to process data more quickly.
- You can create your custom templates.
- SSH key management, with the ability to create or import SSH keys through the Hostwinds Cloud Control Portal.
- Instant scalability means you may expand your cloud server space at any time, for example, by adding more RAM or CPU in a matter of seconds.
Dedicated
The Hostwinds Dedicated Server package is the most customised of them all. You’ll have your own fully managed server here. It’s a good solution if you want complete control over your server.
Hostwinds will create a server that meets your requirements. Tell them how much RAM and which CPU(s) you require, and they’ll take care of the rest.
You can also change the number of discs and their arrangement. The feature set is a little different here in that you get to pick and choose the features you desire.
Hostwinds, on the other hand, claims to have everything for everyone:
- Backups are made every night.
- In the unlikely event that something goes wrong with the server, it will be monitored.
- A service that is fully managed
Hostwinds Uptime
Regardless of which Hostwinds package you choose, the service offers several guarantees to all customers:
- Uptime is guaranteed at 99.9999 per cent.
- Award-winning customer service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days
- A wide range of pricing options is available.
- A guarantee of friendship
- A guarantee of excellence
- A zero-tolerance policy for SPAM
A refund policy that is prorated
Hostwinds Core Pricing Plans
As previously said, Hostwinds’ pricing plans vary depending on the hosting you choose. So, let’s go over the headlines to get an idea of how much you might expect to pay.
The Hostwinds Shared Basic Plan, which started at just $3.29/mo and was discounted from $8.99/mo at writing, is your best pick if you’re launching a new store and want something quick yet cheap. All of the following capabilities are included and a single domain name.
Sticking with Shared hosting, if you want to upgrade to a bigger plan as your business grows, Hostwinds’ Shared Ultimate Plan is their most popular and best value option. This starts at $5.17 per month, down from $12.09. You’ll get all of the features listed above and an unlimited number of domain names.
In the Shared Business Web Hosting plans, prices start to rise, although only by a small amount. The Basic subscription starts at $5.64 per month (down from $13.99). Again, this only allows you to have one domain, but if you upgrade to the Ultimate Plan for $7.99/mo (down from $18.99/mo), you can have unlimited domains.
A short look at the VPS pricing plans reveals that they are more expensive, but not significantly so. Managed Linux starts at $5.17/mo and Managed Windows starts at $7.99/mo, escalating to $23.97/mo and $26.99/mo. The Unmanaged plans are vast and are fully dependent on how much CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth you require for Linux or Windows.
Prices for Cloud Server Hosting are determined by the amount of CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth you require. For example, at the time of writing, the cheapest option with 1 CPU, 1GB RAM, 30GB storage, and 1TB bandwidth would cost $0.006931/hour. The most expensive option is 16 CPUs, 96 GB RAM, 750 GB storage, and 9 TB bandwidth, which costs $0.456931 per hour (at the time of writing).
Finally, if you have huge plans and want a dedicated server, you’ll have to pay more. The cheapest plan is $79.50 per month, down from $106.00 per month, and the most costly plan costs $140.00 per month.
Hostwinds Customer Support
Hostwinds has earned numerous honours, including the FindMyHost.com Editors’ Choice award for client care and ethical business methods.
Furthermore, many review sites, including The Real Yellow Pages, Hostingadvice.com, Sitejabber, and Webhosting Geeks, have given them a 4.5-star rating.
As previously said, Hostwinds provides live chat, ticket help, email, and over-the-phone service to its customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their website also provides a Knowledge Base where you can discover answers to frequently asked issues. Storage guides, account questions, networks, control panels, and other topics are among the topics covered.
A quick Google search reveals that Hostwinds’ users and reviewers are both service enthusiasts. There are numerous five- and four-star ratings and numerous remarks praising the company’s politeness and helpfulness.
Hostwinds’s Security
Hostwinds’ servers are safeguarded by a service known as “Windshield Hardening.” Translated, this means that for an additional $25, you may improve the security of your server even further. To provide your server greater security,
Hostwinds techs perform a security audit, set up your firewall, and perform other server hardening measures.
With Shared, Business, Reseller, and White Label Web Hosting accounts, all of the different hosting options come with a free SSL certificate as standard. For an additional $75 per year, they also offer RapidSSL credentials and WildCard SSL through GeoTrust. Installation is free, and technical help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for any security difficulties or inquiries.
In addition, its data centres have video monitoring, 24/7 staffed network control centres, check-in stations at the gates, and armed security 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Hostwinds’s Speed
No ecommerce business owner wants to be sitting with their head in their hands, exasperated by their hosting company’s slow servers. It does not reflect favourably on anyone’s reputation and may cost you, customers.
Hostwinds claims to be “built with speed in mind,” as evidenced by the following features:
- Rapid read and write speeds on SSD drives
- Its infrastructure and network are constantly monitored.
- The most recent PHP scripting language versions
- Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) shortens the distance between your server and your site’s users.
- Litespeed Web Server employs fewer resources, resulting in faster speeds.
In addition, Hostwinds monitors its outbound network paths regularly and selects the fastest to ensure that traffic to your site is delivered as rapidly as possible. There’s a dedicated page on Hostwinds’ website that talks you through how to test the speed of their current data centres.
Hostwinds’s Interface
You don’t want to deal with a clumsy interface, whether you’re a first-time ecommerce entrepreneur or a seasoned pro. Users have access to a control panel, like with most hosting platforms, to manage their accounts, billing information, and support issues, among other things. This is referred to as the CPanel by Hostwinds.
You may also update your contact information, manage your domains (if you have any), add subdomains, and create email accounts here.
We’re unable to provide any additional information because the link to the CPanel documentation in the Hostwinds Knowledge Base was broken when we tried to view it, which is a bit of a mistake on their part.
Are you prepared to use Hostwinds?
That’s all there is to it. Everything you need to know about Hostwinds: At first look, we feel Hostwinds is an economical, fast, and strong solution for any ecommerce business owner, whether you’re just getting started and want to expand or you’re a seasoned eCommerce pro with an existing website. There is almost certainly a plan that will meet your hosting requirements.
