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Just Host Review: Web Hosting Review |
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| A well-priced option with great performance; no "live" customer support; better for intermediate users | |
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[Editor's note: JustHost is offering Next Advisor visitors 20% discounts on all plans except for the 3-year plan. Just enter SPECIAL20OFF at checkout.] Just Host comes in on the cheaper side at $3.95 per month for three years without any set-up or registration fees, with the exception of an optional $9.95 annual domain privacy charge (something we generally recommend and some web hosts offer for free). Though we purchased domain privacy from Just Host, we had some problems with it at first. Registration is free for the lifetime you have hosting with Just Host, a nice but somewhat standard offer. Also standard is "unlimited" storage and data transfer. You may also opt for a single year at $5.95 per month. A current 20% discount brings that down to $4.95, and applies to their 6-month and 24-month plans. We created a site with the included Sitebuilder which has some of the nicest looking templates we've seen. Adding our own text to them was fairly easy though not as intuitive as with a true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Still, it handily creates the structure and layout for a basic website. Our Wordpress blog was installed easily and instantly, which was nice though fairly standard. Likewise the shopping carts were easily installed, though Zen Cart and Cube Cart, while popular, are fairly complex to start using. These seem like good solutions for users who want to sell and manage a fairly extensive inventory. If you have fewer items, and don't want to spend a lot of time on your online catalog, you should look elsewhere. In the specs department, Just Host is a solid performer. Its uptime during our test period was 99.92%, meaning our site was down for 1 hour 47 minutes over our three-month test period. Its server response time was also reasonably fast at .460 seconds (besting the average of .500 seconds). It really excelled in our download test, clocking in at an average of 50 seconds for our 77MB movie. Few were faster, and then not by much. Despite these impressive stats, it should be noted that the terms of service specify that you can't use the service for audio or video streaming, nor can it be used to distribute software. While we're not sure how serious they are about that, musicians and filmmakers should probably look elsewhere if they plan on hosting their own media content. Where Just Host does fall down is in areas related to the customer experience. Our request for domain privacy didn't work the first time, and the support leaves something to be desired. It's primarily limited to online chat and a trouble-ticket system. You may also find a number for telephone support, but our experience with that support system was not great. After a long hold time we had a disappointing call; we were advised to just send an email support ticket. Our chat was picked up immediately, though support was not the best. Our question was answered, but as personable as we'd like. The trouble ticket had a 7-hour turn-around time when we tried it the first time. Subsequent tries were within the hour turnaround time promised. The performance metrics are great for the price. If you don't require much hand-holding, Just Host may be a great choice for you. Customers who choose domain privacy should just be sure their information shows up correctly. |
| Cheapest Plan: | $3.45/mo 3 years |
| 1 Year Plan: | $59.40/yr; $4.95/mo |
| $ Back Guarantee: | Prorated refund; $20 domain charge |
| Domain: | Free for life |
| Support: | Email, Chat |
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