Hostpapa
- From the company
HostPapa's goal is to provide every customer with a fully-featured hosting package, backed by top customer service and powered by renewable green energy. HostPapa is an established, privately owned company and a leader in high-value, low-cost hosting.
Over the years, HostPapa has built a solid reputation for our commitment to security, reliability, technical expertise and the best in customer support.
Although HostPapa has experienced considerable growth, one thing hasn't changed: we have always believed in treating each HostPapa customer as part of the family. We aim to treat our family well, and strive to provide uninterrupted service, comprehensive educational resources, and all the tools needed to develop an exciting, accessible, quality website.
We invite you to look around our site. Use the links on the left to find out more about the valuable features and benefits we offer, including:
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Guaranteed uptime
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Around-the-clock customer service
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Security and reliability
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Free domain for life
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Leading software
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Top-level servers and technology
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Easy-to-use design and administration tools
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And so much more!
We know how important your website is, to you and your business. Let Papa take care of you! From the company
Hostpapa
Expert Review- From the Editors
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HostPapa.com
1623 Military Road #1013
Niagara Falls, NY 14304-1745
1-888-959-PAPA (7272)
HostPapa was founded in 2005 with the slogan, “Let Papa take care of you.” HostPapa has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Canada, and uses 100% green energy data centers in those locations.
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Review
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Sales
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I was interested in purchasing a shared web hosting plan from HostPapa and took to live chat to get a few simple sales questions answered. Much to my surprise, live chat was dead. Turns out, HostPapa only offers live chat support from 8-10pm EST, so I was out of luck. I had better luck with HostPapa’s telephone sales team. I was able to connect with a sales member is less than 30 minutes and he answered all of my questions and invited me to come back should I need more clarification.
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Setup
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Signing up for an account with HostPapa was a simple, straightforward process that took no longer than ten minutes. I’d been told by the sales team member that account activation was instant, so once I paid for my account, I sat back and excitedly waiting the welcome email I was sure to follow. I was wrong. After 24 hours had passed and I still hadn’t received my account details, I called HostPapa to ask if there were problems with my credit card. I was then told that account setup normally takes 1-3 days and an account representative always calls customers to confirm orders before the activation process even begins. Disappointing. All things told, it took 3 days for my shared web hosting to be activated with HostPapa.
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Billing
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HostPapa customers are able to pay for web hosting in one, two or three year cycles. I paid for one year of hosting, was never billed for services I had not ordered, and had no trouble cancelling my account at the end of the year.
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Pricing
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HostPapa features one plan at three different prices, determined by the length of time you choose to host with them. One year of hosting with HostPapa, which includes unlimited space and bandwidth, costs $6.95/month, which is fairly average.
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Reliability
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The server where my websites were located experienced multiple hardware failures during my one year stay. Each time my website went down, I contacted support, but rarely received any information about what was happening until after the fact. All server hardware fails at some point, but the lack of communication made HostPapa a tad unreliable in my eyes. In addition, my web pages were very slow to load at times, making me wonder if HostPapa wasn’t guilty of overselling.
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Support
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HostPapa offers clients support by email, an online trouble ticket system, live chat and a toll free telephone number. I found that it often took 2-3 days to get any sort of support by email and when it arrived, answers rarely addressed my original questions. Live chat representatives appeared equally unschooled of the ins and outs of web hosting, many times directing me to the trouble ticket system, where my questions mostly went unanswered. I did have some success by phone! On average, it takes 30-60 to reach a support team member, and more often than not, telephone support was able to quickly assess a website problem and get it fixed in a timely manner. Thumbs up to the telephone support.
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Uptime
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I use a premium uptime monitor to keep tabs on my websites. My website was down twelve times during my one year stay with HostPapa, which equated to about one major outage per month. The average length of downtime varied from a few minutes to over a day.
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Guarantee
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99.9% uptime guarantee
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30 day money back guarantee
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Terms of Service
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The Terms of Service for Softsys are available online. Highlights include:
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HostPapa reserves the right to limit the amount of bandwidth available to any one client.
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Strict SPAM policy. Violating offenders will be charged a $200 cleanup fee.
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Accounts in violation of Terms of Service will be terminated.
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Advantages
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Affordable prices.
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Environmentally friendly.
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Free domain with the purchase of a hosting account.
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Easy to use control panel (cPanel).
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Good telephone support.
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Disadvantages
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Long commitment period of 1-3 years.
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Live chat not operational 24/7.
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Ridiculously slow email and help desk support.
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Network not always reliable.
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Disclosure: We are a professional review site that receives compensation from the
companies whose products we review only when you buy through us. We test each product
thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned
and the opinions expressed in Expert Reviews are our own.