Hostony Review

"The best thing about this plan is that it seems to have everything packed inside - PHP, MySQL, FrontPage extensions, subdomains, telnet, SSL, shopping cart and more."

$7.85/month (Free Setup) 200,000 MB disk space, 2,000 GB Bandwidth, Free Domain Name

Overview

Hostony was founded in 2001 and is run by Serge Ryabchuck. They offer 2 different shared hosting plans under $10/month - the $7.85 PROFI plan and the $11.85 SPECIAL plan. They advertised a significant cheaper price in their website. This is because they are referring to 4 years prepay, while we are referring to 1 year prepay.

The PROFI plan allows you to host up to 10 domains (10 sites) under the same account! It comes with 200,000 MB of disk space and 2,000 GB of bandwidth. The SPECIAL plan comes with 300,000 MB of disk space and 3,000 GB of bandwidth. Most important, it allows you host unlimited domains under the same account.

We will discuss more about the PROFI plan below.

Plan Size and Features

As mentioned earlier, the PROFI plan comes with 200,000 MB (200 GB) of disk space and 2,000 GB of bandwidth. They have to make these numbers big so that can compete with the BIG boys out there. So do not focus too much on these numbers.

The best thing about this plan is that it seems to have everything packed inside - PHP, MySQL, FrontPage extensions, subdomains, telnet, SSL, shopping cart and more. Simply check the features chart on your left to see exactly what is offered. Also take a look at the comparison chart at their web site and you will be surprised at the amount of features you will get from this plan!

This plan also uses CPanel as the control panel software, which is our favorite. To learn more about the benefits of CPanel, please read our LunarPages review.

Since they also offer the SPECIAL plan that supports unlimited domain, you may choose to upgrade your account at any time when you need to host more websites. It is really difficult to finish up the disk space and bandwidth allocated by the PROFI plan itself.

Customer Support

We have received a lot of positive feedback about their services. Most of the feedback claimed that they provide great customer support so we also tested it out ourselves by sending numerous emails to them. They replied promptly and we are very satisfied with their response speed.

To request support, you can submit a ticket through their support desk, or you may simply email support@hostony.com. You can expect a reply from Serge himself or his support staff, including Alex and Tara. Like LunarPages and PowWeb, they also offer a support forum. You may ask anything here, including your pre-sales questions. The forum is quite active, but does not have a large amount of members compared to LunarPages and PowWeb. Now, live chat is also available.

A disadvantage of Hostony is that all support must go through email, support desk, live chat or the forum since phone support is not available.

Free Domain Name

They will register a free domain name for you if you purchase any plan from them. The hosting account must be used to host this new domain. As long as you maintain your hosting account with them, you don't even need to pay for any renewal fees in the future! However, if you choose to leave Hostony one day, you will need to pay $14.85 for that domain name.

Order Process

You can choose to pay with major credit cards or through PayPal. You can't pay with check or money order. The signup process is rather simple, just pick your domain name and make the payment.

Advice

As we discussed earlier, there is no phone support available. Also, the disk space and bandwidth numbers do look ridiculous. Beyond this, it is really a very nice plan. You can expect quick response from their help desk and forum. If you choose to host with Hostony, you should also consider their SPECIAL plan because it allows you to host unlimited sites/domains. Please read other reviews of the top 10 hosts before you make any decision - BlueHost Review & iPowerWeb Review.

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