Host Rocket

Plan Reviewed: Shared Hosting

Pros

• 30-day money back guarantee
• $50 Yahoo Search Marketing credit

Cons

• $29.95 setup fee
• $49.95 disconnect fee
• No uptime guarantee
• Poor customer service
• No chat support
• No FrontPage Extensions support, No Python support, No Cold Fusion support, No Postgre SQL databases

Conclusion
Host Rocket's Shared Hosting plan is a subpar web hosting plan. The plan supports Perl, PHP, and CGI. However, it only supports 10 MySQL databases and doesn't support FrontPage extensions, Python, Cold Fusion, or PostgreSQL databases. If you have a website or database that requires that software to run properly, then you should look at other services that do support those frameworks.

Host Rocket charges a setup fee regardless of which plan you purchase and never specifies the amount of it on their website. We had to contact them to find out that it was $29.95. On top of that, it took a long time to make changes to our files in their File Manager. They also don't have chat support or have an uptime guarantee. If you decide to cancel your service after the 30 day money back guarantee period, you must pay a $49.95 disconnect fee. We suggest looking at other web hosting providers that provide more for your money.

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Host Papa

Plan Reviewed: Basic

Pros

• 30-day money back guarantee
• $25 Yahoo Search Marketing credit
• $50 Promo People Products credit

Cons

• No pro-rated refund for unused months
• Limited customer service hours
• No Google AdWords&trade credit
• No MSN adCenter credits
• No Ruby on Rails support, ASP.net support, No Cold Fusion support

Conclusion
Host Papa gives you a decent service but there are a few crucial things missing, such as a pro-rated refund, broad support for various programming languages and 24/7 customer service, making it hard to recommend. If you decide to cancel your service after the 30 day money back guarantee period, you aren't given a refund. Host Papa's customer service hours are limited to 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the weekends. Virtually all web hosts have 24/7 customer service, so it is not a good sign that Host Papa has restricted customer service hours. Host Papa also does not backup data on their servers, while all of the other web hosting providers in our survey do. They do not take any responsibility for any data lost on their servers, which is not the most reassuring thing to see when signing up for a web hosting plan.

The plan does give you $25 worth advertising credits with Yahoo but that is nothing extraordinary. Host Papa service supports what scripting languages you would expect and not much more. Their service only supports PHP, Perl, and CGI. You should usually expect to get support for Ruby on Rails or Python, but it is forgivable that Host Papa's service does not support them.

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1 & 1

Plan Reviewed: Beginner

Pros

• 90-day money back guarantee
• $50 Microsoft Adcenter credit
• $25 Google AdWords&trade credit
• $25 Yahoo Search Marketing credit

Cons

• No pro-rated refund for unused months
• No server priority
• No uptime guarantee
• No audio or video support
• No chat support
• No Ruby on Rails support, ASP.net support, No Cold Fusion support

Conclusion
1&1's Beginner plan has many cons to their service. If you decide to cancel your service after the 90 day money back guarantee period, you aren't given a refund. Unless you purchase their most expensive plan, you aren't given server priority which means that your website's uptime will be lower. This is probably the reason they don't have an uptime guarantee. 1&1 doesn't support Ruby on Rails, ASP.net, or Cold Fusion. If you have a website or database that requires that software to run properly, you should look at Host Gator for Ruby on Rails and ASP.net support and IX Webhosting for Cold Fusion support. They also don't provide live chat support which makes us wary about how reliable their service is.

1&1's Beginner plan includes 1 free domain and gives you $100 in search engine marketing credits spread across Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. However, their cons far outweigh their pros. Although the Beginner plan is cheap, you can get a much more robust service elsewhere for an additional dollar per month.

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Easy CGI

Plan Reviewed: Advanced

Pros

• 30-day money back guarantee
• 24/7 phone and email support

Cons

• No pro-rated refund for unused months
• No free domain name
• No site promotion credits
• No chat support
• No FrontPage extensions support, No ASP.net support, No Cold Fusion support, No PostgreSQL databases

Conclusion
For the features you get, Easy CGI's Advanced plan is overpriced. We recommend looking at other web hosting providers to get more out of your money. For starters, the plan doesn't support FrontPage Extensions, ASP.net, Cold Fusion, or PostgreSQL databases. They also don't offer a pro-rated refund. If you decide to cancel your service after the 30 day money back guarantee period, you aren't given a refund. Easy CGI also doesn't give you a free domain name or offer you any site promotion credits to get you started with your search engine marketing campaigns. Although they have 24/7 phone and email support, they don't provide live chat support.

The Advanced plan supports Perl, PHP, CGI, and 50 MySQL databases. You only get 350 GB of disk space and 3,500 GB of bandwidth, but this is far more than the average user needs. Overall, we strongly recommend looking elsewhere to find a web hosting provider with a more robust feature set.

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