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5005 NewPort Dr Suite 503
Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
1-877-998-4678
Webhostingpad.com was formed in 2005. Operating from a data center in Chicago, IL, Web Hosting Pad offers shared web hosting plans and domain names, and serves more than 150,000 customers.
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Review
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Sales
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I wanted to find out if Web Hosting Pad offered an unadvertised month to month plan, so I took my questions to their sales team. Sales support is available by live chat, email and telephone. I popped off an email and waited. Then I waited some more. After 72 hours, I still had no response from Web Hosting Pad, and I jumped on their live chat. Unlike the email team, I was met by sales rep Brent S. in mere seconds. Brent was quick to answer my questions, though he didn’t always seem to understand the questions. When I asked what control panel Web Hosting Pad used, Brent gave me a three paragraph answer about add-on domains through cPanel. I get the feeling Brent was dealing with multiple chat sessions and copying and pasting responses. Even so, I got my answers quickly from live chat and found Brent to be more than willing to help. Not bad.
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Setup
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The sign-up process with Web Hosting Pad is no more complicated than filling out a short online order form. After that, it took approximately half an hour for my welcome email to arrive. Smooth!
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Billing
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Almost right off the bat I had an issue with the billing department. I had signed up to pay one year in advance, but was actually charged for a five year plan. I attempted to make contact with the billing department, but found they were only open during business hours. That meant I had to wait through a long holiday weekend to get things straightened out with my bank. Despite the setback, Web Hosting Pad did resolve the mistake quickly.
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Pricing
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Web Hosting Pad offers unlimited space and bandwidth. Like many other unlimited hosts, Web Hosting Pad bills according to the length of your plan. Pay five years in advance and you’ll be charged just $1.99/month. Good deal, and certainly one of the least expensive hosts on the market.
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Reliability
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I was running a Joomla site on Web Hosting Pad, and the combination led to significant speed issues. My website would occasionally load in the evenings, but it usually timed out during the day and it seemed no one, including myself, could actually see my web pages. After six months of poor performance, Web Hosting Pad moved me to a new server and, though that server didn’t perform perfectly either, it was much improved.
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Support
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Support is available by email, telephone, help desk and live chat. When suffering with the problem above, where my website wouldn’t load, I contacted support continually for a period of five months, requesting to be moved to a different, less troubled server. Email support basically doesn’t exist. I’d write, but would get no response. Telephone support was quick to answer the phone, but never resolved my problem. By phone I was told that I should expect performance fluctuations and that it was normal for my website to be offline at certain times of the day. Hmm. I did eventually get some real support from live chat, and was successfully moved to a new server thanks to a helpful, quick to cooperate live chat rep. All in all, support is hit or miss. Your best bet for any real help is by live chat.
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Uptime
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I use a premium uptime monitor to keep track of domains. Because my website would not load properly for six months, performance was dismal during that period. For the last six months of my stay, after being put on a new server, Web Hosting Pad did live up to their uptime guarantee.
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Guarantee
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99.999% uptime guarantee
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30-day money back guarantee.
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Terms of Service
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You can find the Terms of Service for Web Hosting Pad online. Highlights include:
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Excessive server resource usage may result in account suspension.
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No spamming allowed.
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Service credits for downtime must be manually applied for.
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IRC and bots strictly forbidden.
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Advantages
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Cheap.
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Unlimited add-on domains allowed.
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Free domain for one year on all plans.
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Easy to use control panel (cPanel).
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Live chat very responsive.
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Disadvantages
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Support is hit or miss.
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Server performance touchy.
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Limited billing and sales hours.
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Must sign long term contract.
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