HostPapa Review

Better Business Bureau Rating: C-
Date Established:October 2005

Reliability: C-
Server Speed: B
Customer Service: D-
Cost: B+

This hosting service has recieved

HostPapa Review

Hostpapa Reviews HostPapa is a web hosting company that was established in 2005. While they have only been existence for less than a decade they are one of the fastest growing hosting companies. They appeal to a lot of small businesses as well as resellers because they offered those type of plans. Another key selling point with Hostpapa is you are going to get "World Class" customer service, and they are eco-friendly so you are helping the environment by choosing there service (like GreenGeeks).

I know it all sounds appealing, but is it to good to be true? Sadly, I do not recommend HostPapa because there are a bunch of big issues that I have with there service. Please get ready to learn exactly why I would recommend that you choose another web hosting company to do business with.

Features

It's pretty simple because HostPapa only offers two different types of plans. There is absolutely no way you are going to sign up for a VPS or dedicated plan because they don't offer it. Instead you either go with there shared plan ($3.95) per month or one of there reseller plans. So I will start with what you get with the shared plan.

Shared Plan

Like most hosting providers you are going to receive a free domain (for life), but realistically as long as you stay with them (if you leave it is $26/year). Everyone else offers that service too, so it's not just HostPapa's special offer. You are promised "unlimited" bandwidth which just like other host isn't really practical because there is a limit (from my experience you will be fine with 200 visitors a day with a shared plan). Also, you will get free setups for the configuration of your server and actually I do like there control panel because they do use cPanel, and you can simply use Fantastico to install your scripts. So pretty much you are promised everything to get your site up and running.

Reseller Plan

If you want to purchase there reseller plan and allocate some of your server with them you are free to sign up with there reseller plan by clicking "reseller plan" from the homepage, where you will see a slider with five different options. The first is "bronze" ($19.95/month), "silver" ($27.95/month), gold ($39.95/month), "platinum" ($59.95/month), and lastly "Titanium" (S79.95/month). Looks good and everything right?

Not so fast, people are reporting a lots of issues with there service. I have actually worked on a number of sites that used HostPapa and they were nothing but trouble.

Uptime and Reliability

In a perfect world everything would run perfectly all the time and we would never have any issues. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world and HostPapa has made a couple of my clients life miserable and a lot of fellow webmasters lifes less enjoyable. Simply put, your site/sites are either running perfect (for a short time) or your site is down throughout the day. In some cases a people have even reported there sites being down for a couple days.

Along with your sites being down there servers do not seem to be as fast as InMotions or Hostgator. My guess would be that HostPapa tries to cram way to many people on there servers just like GoDaddy. Moreover, I have talked to a number of clients that used to host with them and they merely stated that HostPapa was very good in the beginning. Once they started acquiring more and more customers there service went all downhill from there.

They bit off more than they could chew and spent a massive amount of money on Adwords while attempting to rope in more and more clients. Rather than taking care of all there customers they simply went with the business model of bringing in more customers and neglecting there current ones. Pretty much like a dirty car salesman; they will tell you everything you want to hear, but once you drive away you find out the car has been in a flood and everything isn't quite as authentic as it appeared.

Customer Service

If you have been following my reviews on the-best-web-hosting-service.com you already know by now that customer service is very important to me. As mentioned above you will have issues, more than likely and you will need to get in touch with customer service. You could simply go on the notion that there customer service is helpful and will get you squared away. However, if you went with that you would be mislead and your time and money would be wasted.

I actually logged on to there live chat because there was multiple issues with my client's website. There was conflict in the .htaccess file and the server was in an endless loop that would never redirect properly. So I logged onto the live chat and damn thing wouldn't ever connect. Once it did and then I was immediately kicked out? Furthermore, from talking to other webmasters they are also reporting similar problems or little to no assistance on the other end.

I haven't tested out there phone support or email support but I have heard that it can take quite awhile to get responses. Once you do get a response it really isn't all that helpful and you will have to repeatedly go through the process and wait a couple of days (if they respond) in which nothing ever really gets done.

The Bottom Line With HostPapa

HostPapa used to be so good, but somewhere along the lines they took in more customers than they can handle. There "personal" help isn't really what it seems. While they do offer cheap hosting packages, the feedback from a lot of webmasters seems to be very negative. I would like to hear from HostPapa on what they are doing to keep there paying customers happy. If a member of there team would please leave a message that would be much appreciated. I would encourage anyone that uses HostPapa and good offer some detailed information about your experience with them good or bad, please do so down below. If you found this HostPapa review helpful in anyway please push the share buttons down below. Thank you so much for reading this and I hope it was of some assistance to you. Lastly, if you are looking for a good web hosting provider that has good customer support go with InMotion or Fatcow because they will treat you right.