 |
Lunarpages Web Hosting Review |
Go to Site | View Full Comparison Chart |
Website: |
Visit Website |
Rating: |
 |
| Great online site builder for beginners; excellent upload and download speeds; $24 off 2-year plan with code: Fall24 | |
Full Review: |
[Editor's note: Lunarpages is offering $24.00 off of its two-year hosting plan. Just use the code "Fall24" at checkout.]
Lunarpages, while falling into the median price range for web hosting, is a nice option for beginners due to its easy site builder. We would quibble only with the integration of some of the third-party options and the $7.95 annual domain privacy (something we strongly recommend for individuals, and which some web hosts offer for free). Hosting with the Lunar Pages Basic Hosting Plan is $4.95 a month for five years, and free domain registration is included for the first year only; you'll be paying $19.95 per year after that. If five years is too long of a comittment, you can do one year at $8.95 per month for the web hosting. The data storage and bandwidth are 'unlimited', meaning that you can upload as much as you want, and take as many users as the web is likely to throw at you, provided the web host doesn't find it excessive. This is pretty standard with web hosts and shouldn't be a problem for casual users with personal sites or small businesses. Lunarpages' strongest offering is its Pagemason site builder that offers true WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) site design. Like all sitebuilders, it offers you a number of templates to drop your text into. Editing the text is easy and intuitive, even if the templates aren't the most attractive we've seen. It still left us with a positive experience. Beginners could have a simple site up-and-running within an hour. Wordpress was also easily installed, as was Zen Cart. A big bonus for Lunarpages is how all the installations are managed through the same Alpaca control panel. This gives the site a cohesive feel absent from many web hosting services. We did a test-upload with our 83MB website, and it uploaded just under 9 minutes, on par with most. The 77MB sample movie we uploaded played though with only a few minor hiccups, though it took about four seconds to start. Still, we were pleased with the data transfer rate, since it's a pretty large video that was not optimized for the web. We made one support call to their support number. While the call was answered quickly, it did not solve our problem on the first try. They offer telephone support 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday. The number is not toll-free, so phone charges to Orange County, California will apply. There's also an email-based trouble ticket system. Lunarpages offers a fairly standard 30-day money-back guarantee, though after that there's no pro-rated refund offered. As with other web hosts, any cancelation refund is non-inclusive of the domain charge, which is $19.95 here. Lunarpages would be an average, slightly expensive option if it weren't for the site builder tool. That element alone puts it in consideration with Yahoo! Small Business and HostGator for the beginning website publisher. |
Service Details:
| Cheapest Plan: | $5.95/mo 2 years (with discount: Fall24) |
| 1 Year Plan: | $107.40/yr; $8.95/mo |
| $ Back Guarantee: | Prorated refund; no refund on domain |
| Domain: | Free for 1 year |
| Support: | Email, Phone |
About Us Blog Contact UsTerms & Privacy PolicyAffiliate ProgramSite map
Copyright© 2006 - NextAdvisor.com - All rights reserved.