Founded in 2010, Hostwinds is one of the fastest-growing private US web hosting companies. It is an independent firm that is considered to be one of the highest-rated and most affordable web hosting services in the world.
Should you move your sites to Hostwinds? What features does HW offer to the users? Here’s our honest review of the Hostwinds web hosting company!
Review
Interface
The Hostwinds website is easy to navigate. Its header and footer section has links to all important pages on the website. The plans pages display the features and pricing. They also have an option to buy the plan.
Plans
HW specializes in four types of hosting – shared, VPS, cloud, dedicated. The shared hosting plans are ideal for small websites/blogs. Cloud hosting is for users who are looking for a scalable web hosting solution. VPS and dedicated plans are suitable for businesses, SaaS applications, and large websites.
HW offers the Softaculous one-click installer tool through which you can install WordPress, Joomla, Magento, CPVLab, VBulletin, and 100s of other applications. In case you don’t want to use an app, you can use Weebly to create and launch a website on Hostwind’s platform. HW provides a Cpanel tool with which you can create FTP/email accounts, create sub-domains, check log files, monitor the website, backup the databases, manage files, etc.
Like other web hosting firms, Hostwinds ships with a one-click Letsencrypt setup tool which you can use to make your website HTTPS ready without manually modifying the webserver configuration file or typing complex Linux commands. Hostwinds has a data center in Dallas and Seattle. Its offices are located in Seattle and Tulsa.
Let’s have a look at the features and pricing of these four web hosting services:
Hostwinds basic hosting plan is priced at $5.24 per month. This plan offers unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The company provides “advanced” and “ultimate” plans to users who want to host more than 1 website. The advanced plan costs $6.74 and it enables you to host 4 websites. The unlimited plan gives you the freedom of hosting unlimited websites. It is priced at $8.24.
Hostwinds has special plans for businesses. The business servers ship with high-performance Litespeed web servers and solid-state drives. This is the only difference between shared and business hosting plans. The business hosting plans start at $5.64.
Cloud
Hostwinds cloud hosting plans start at $4.99 per month. It lets you resize the server with few clicks of the mouse. Hostwinds cloud servers transfer/receive data at speeds up to 1Gbps. The cloud servers have RAM up to 96GB and a 16 core processor. The $4.99 plan server has 1GB RAM, 30GB storage memory, and a single-core processor. The $10 pan provides a server with 50GB storage memory, 1 core processor, and 2GB RAM. The $18.99 plan offers a cloud server that has 4GB RAM, 75GB storage, and 2 core processor.
Hostwinds supports object and block storage technology. Its servers are protected by an Enterprise Grade Firewall. Hostwinds offers data backup/restoration snapshot service to the users who are concerned about data loss or are uncomfortable in backing up the website data manually. Hostwinds provides templates with which you can build your own cloud server.
VPS
Hostwinds VPS plans are divided into four categories – managed Linux/Windows and unmanaged Windows/Linux. The managed Linux hosting plans are a bit costlier than unmanaged plans. Managed Windows hosting plans, in contrast, are cheap. HW allows users to choose CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora operating systems. It also supports custom ISOs in case you want to use an operating system other than the ones mentioned above. Hostwinds VPS server users enjoy free website transfers. Managed Windows VPS hosting plan starts at $8.24 whereas the unmanaged plan will cost you a minimum of $4.99.
Dedicated
Hostwinds offers 4 dedicated server plans which you can customize as per your requirements. Dedicated servers of Hostwinds support the following operating systems:
- Fedora 24, 25, 26, Debian 9.
- Centos 6,7, Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, and Windows server 2008, 20012, 2016.
The servers are powered by Intel E series processors. They have an uptime of 99.999%, up to 3TB storage memory, and up to 48GB RAM. Hostwinds gives users access to tools for easy management of the server.
Payments
You can checkout on the Hostwinds website with a credit/debit card or your PayPal account. HW is one of the few web hosting companies that offer 60 days money-back guarantee. Most companies offer a refund only if you submit an application within 30 days of buying a plan.
Domain registration
HW enables you to register over 200 types of domains. Once you buy a domain, you can manage nameservers, modify your WHOIS data, etc. A .com domain on Hostwinds costs $14.84, a .net costs $18.20 and a .org domain is priced at $18.55.
Support
Hostwinds provides 24 x 7 phone, email, and live chat support to the users. The phone number of the company is mentioned on the footer as well as the header area of the company’s official website. To get email support, you should raise a ticket. Users who need urgent help from the HW support staff can use the live chat module. HW has an active Facebook page. According to Facebook, the company’s staff reply to text messages within a few minutes. Thus, you can also reach the company’s staff on FB.
Hostwinds’s website doesn’t feature an extensive knowledgebase. Thus, newbie users will have to search for tutorials on other websites to learn the topics of hosting that are not covered in the Hostwinds knowledgebase.
Check out the Hostwinds knowledge base here
Pros
- Affordable pricing.
- Intuitive interface.
Cons
- No direct support for Cloudflare.
Final thoughts
Hostwinds cloud, shared, dedicated, and VPS hosting plans are affordable. The company offers various modes of support and an easy to use control panel for managing the websites. Although Hostwinds doesn’t have a huge experience as a web hosting company, it offers high-quality service and support to the customers. Its guarantee of refunding money within 60 days makes Hostwinds worth trying out.
Deal
Click here to get up to a 53% discount or use the coupon code reviewslion and get 50% off for the first month on any Hostwinds web hosting plan of your choice.
