WestHost
- From the company
Overview
Since 1998, WestHost has been an affordable Web hosting provider. We have maintained ourselves as a leader in the Web hosting industry and have helped thousands of businesses all over the planet take advantage of low cost internet services to become more successful, efficient, and competitive. We currently host over 70,000 Web sites.
With a large client base comes a diverse range of Web hosting requirements. We have tailored our company around these needs by providing flexible and scalable services. These services include Shared Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Reseller Hosting, Domain Registration, E-commerce Tools, and Merchant Account solutions.
Our efforts and focus have and always will be directed to the client and their needs. We will continue to maintain ourselves as a low-cost complete Web hosting provider, while maintaining our standards of a solid infrastructure, secure environment, unfailing and redundant connection, and superior 24/7 client support.
WestHost's Promise to you:
100% Lifetime Satisfaction Promise
-
We promise to work with you honestly and fairly.
-
We promise to provide you with fast, helpful and friendly answers to your questions 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
-
We promise to provide you with optimal uptime. Our hosting systems infrastructure will be constructed, maintained, and monitored to ensure 99.9% uptime.
-
We promise to employ the highest skilled and trained support staff in the industry.
-
We understand that from time to time problems may occur. We promise to address all issues promptly and courteously.
-
We take our promises very seriously and will issue you with an appropriate credit if we have failed to meet our end of the bargain.
Your Promise to WestHost:
-
You promise to be honest, fair and respectful when dealing with WestHost's employees.
-
You promise to take responsibility for your Web site and will not abuse the WestHost servers, network, or inconvenience fellow WestHost clients.
-
You promise to abide by the WestHost Terms of Service.
-
You promise to provide WestHost with open and honest feedback.
-
You recognize that occasionally problems may occur, and promise to give WestHost the time and information required to competently address any issues.
WestHost
Expert Review- From the Editors
|
164 N Gateway Drive
Providence, UT 84332
800.222.2165
WestHost has been in the web hosting business since 1998. Acquired by the UK2 Group in 2008, Utah-based WestHost offers shared and reseller hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers and domain names.
|
Review
|
Sales
|
|
|
Sales questions at WestHost are taken by live chat, telephone and email. I spoke with reps using all three mediums, and found them each to be well schooled, polite and helpful. Each sales representative also gave me a coupon code for a free domain name and reduced hosting charges. The coupon code was given to me without any pressure to sign-up, and still worked when I finally did get an account some two weeks later. Fantastic!
|
Setup
|
|
|
Signing up for an account takes place online or by phone. The online order form is easy to understand and takes about three minutes to complete. It was an hour or more after sign-up that I received my bill of sale and another hour before my welcome letter arrived. While this is a fairly decent turnaround for a larger sized company, online shoppers (including me) tend to feel more secure about doing business on the Internet when their proof of payment is sent to their email address immediately. Aside from that, no complaints.
|
Billing
|
|
|
Money matters are handled by email. I had no issues with the billing department during my one year stay.
|
Pricing
|
|
|
WestHost’s smallest and most widely advertised plan includes 50 gigabytes of space and 1,000 gigabytes of bandwidth for $4/month. That price can only be secured, however, by paying for an account three years in advance. Unfortunately, you don’t find out about the three year contract requirement until you get to the final page of the checkout process or by reading the fine print. It’s undoubtedly a great deal, but slightly misleading.
|
Reliability
|
|
|
My website was down sporadically during my first week with WestHost. After not hearing a peep, I phoned, only to learn that the RAM on my server was bad and would be replaced within 24 hours. True to their word, WestHost did have me up and running less than a day later. I had no other hardware issues in a 12 month period.
|
Support
|
|
|
WestHost is quick to answer questions by live chat, email and phone, but is not so quick to inform customers of server status, routine maintenance or network issues. On multiple occasions I was forced to contact WestHost myself to find out why my website was offline or had slowed to a crawl. While the reps were helpful and glad to answer my questions, it would be nice for WestHost to reach out themselves with an informative email or at least have a network status page available to clients.
|
Uptime
|
|
|
I use a premium uptime monitor to keep an eye on my domains. That monitor alerted me often that something was awry with my web hosting. While WestHost did maintain their promised 99.9% uptime guarantee during the majority of my stay, their network speeds were so slow at times that my uptime monitor reported them as being offline.
|
Guarantee
|
-
60 day money back guarantee.
-
99.9% uptime guarantee.
|
Terms of Service
|
|
The Terms of Service for WestHost are online. Highlights include:
-
Contract delivery network streaming not allowed.
-
IRC bots, spamming, adult content, and gambling websites forbidden.
-
Money back guarantee does not apply to cloud, server or reseller hosting.
|
Advantages
|
-
Support team is knowledgeable, fast and friendly.
-
Free domain with some plans.
-
Happy to offer coupon codes and discounts to new customers.
-
Easy-to-use control panel (cPanel).
-
Solid money back guarantee.
|
Disadvantages
|
-
Website prices misleading.
-
No month-to-month plans offered.
-
Server speeds very slow at times.
-
No mailing lists allowed on some plans.
-
Fails to reach out to clients and communicate about server and network issues.
|
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.