Is PowWeb shared hosting a good choice for customers? This in-depth review gives the answer. Many people may wonder about this question for this company claims to provide the state-of-the-art service with an affordable price. However, is it really as good as it said?
This review is based on our real hosting experience and the hundreds of customer reviews we have read over the Internet. Move to the following parts tp learn the pros and cons of the share hosting service from PowWeb.
Overall Rating
This company was established in 1999 and located in Massachusetts, USA. After many years’ experience in this industry, the company is gradually on track but has nothing special. It provides only one web hosting plan which offers no other choices for customers. Besides, many technologies used by this company are actually not user-friendly. This part would be discussed later.
In order to give readers the more detailed information, we have presented an overall rating chart as followed.
The Pros of PowWeb Hosting
Every company has its merits and demerits, so does PowWeb. As a company that has a long history, it succeeds in offering truly quality hosting service. Now this company is hosting a large number of domains worldwide and has won a good reputation. Check the detailed merits in the following:
- Competitive Features
PowWeb is one of the rich-featured hosting companies we have reviewed by now. It provides unlimited disk space and monthly bandwidth. Unlimited FTP accounts, MySQL and email accounts are also offered. Besides, PHP 5, Perl 5, Sendmail and Zend Optimizer are available.
Moreover, in order to simplify the installing process, this company offers instant installation tool. With it, customers can get applications installed with several clicks.
- Good Customer Service
By using the company’s active community forum and video tutorials, customers can get most of their questions and problems solved. Besides, it also provides 24/7/365 technical support via toll free phone call, live chat as well as email. What’s more, all of its support staffs are professional and well-trained. Thus, excellent after-sales service is guaranteed.
- Various Marketing Tools
In order to help customers promote their websites, it gives every customer $100 Google AdWords Bonus, $25 Yahoo and Bing Sponsored search Credits, $50 Facebook Ad Credits and free yellow page.com listing.
The Cons of PowWeb Hosting
It is undeniable that this company offers quit good customer service, useful features and valuable marketing tools. However, with regard to its uptime guarantee, price, money back policy and some other aspects, this company hasn’t showed a good performance. Check the drawbacks as bellow:
- Uptime Guarantee
When it comes to choosing a hosting company, people spontaneously pay much attention to uptime. However, unlike many other web hosts who guarantee at least 99.9% uptime and present the information on their home pages, this company doesn’t put this important information there. Thus, before purchasing its plan, customers can’t know their uptime officially.
- Applications Provided
Although many scripts can be installed by its instant installer, Drupal doesn’t be listed in the Script Library. Actually, Drupal is a very popular application nowadays which is used by more than millions of people. For customers who need this application, the only choice is to install manually from Drupal.org which is very sophisticated. Thus, customers are supposed to spend a lot of time on the process.
- Price Policy
It is true that the company provides a comparatively affordable price which is starting at $3.88/mo. However, this low price is only valid for at least 2-year plan. As for one year plan, the price is $4.18/mo. Besides, the monthly plan is not available in this company. Thus, customers are locked to a long-term billing.
- Control Panel
Different from other web hosts which utilize the user-friendly cPanel, this web host utilizes customer-build one named Member Operation. To be honest, cPanel has been used by millions of customers with easy-to-use features while the customer-build one is just on the contrary which means users are tend to spend some time to get familiar with it.
- Refund Policy
Both credit card and PayPal are acceptable for the company. However, when people want to end the cooperation, only those who paid with credit card can get their money back. To be honest, this is not fair. Besides, the 30-day money back guarantee is only applying to the hosting plan. For instance, if a customer spends $15 on add-on domains, he can’t cancel the order which means he would never get his money back in this part.
Better Alternatives
In general, although PowWeb has some advantages, those good aspects are actually shared by many other web hosts. Thus, those merits have nothing special and unique, which can’t become the reason for purchasing. However, on the other side, the weaknesses are obvious especially for the industry reputation and control panel. Those drawbacks really make customers hesitated.
Under this situation, our editors would like to recommend some excellent web hosting alternatives – Arvixe, WebHostingHub and JustHost. All of them have good reputation in this industry for providing insuperable hosting services for millions of customers.
Check the detailed information in the following chart: