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Web Hosting Pad Review: Web Hosting Review |
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| Good price, but pokey performance; better suited for intermediate users with non-media sites | |
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Web Hosting Pad is one of the most affordable web hosts we reviewed. At $4.95 per month, for a year, it comes in at the lower range for web hosting services. One domain name is included, though free registration is for the first year only. Domain privacy is included for free, a feature we strongly recommend for individuals, and that some other web hosts charge for, but there's at least one major caveat: the performance.
Your hosting service buys you "unlimited" storage and data transfer, comparable with most other hosting options. It also buys you a rather standard set of page-building and shopping cart options, none of them stellar in terms of ease-of-use, but acceptable for those who want to learn them. The SoHo sitebuilder is counter-intuitive at first. Users looking for a particularly nice set of online site creation tools would be urged to look at Yahoo! or HostGator. One thing to keep in mind is that Web Hosting Pad's terms-of-service prohibit distribution of multimedia products. It's a limitation that makes sense in light of our testing. Its uptime fell in at at 99.75% (below the 99.88% group average). Its server response time was not much better at a slow-ish .586 seconds, a bit worse than the .500 second average, but the download of our 77MB file nearly put us to sleep at 4 minutes 53 seconds. This reinforces our general view that the cheap price comes at a bit of a performance cost. We had some trouble with our shopping-cart installations, which is not uncommon for web hosts, since the web host often uses applications designed by other companies. We had to call a toll-free technical support number to get our shopping cart to work. Tech support was capable and the hold-time was short. One other thing to note is that after the fairly standard 30-day money-back guarantee, there are no refunds offered. This is unusual for a web hosting company, so if you do choose Web Hosting Pad, make sure you're happy with the offering early on. All-in-all Web Hosting Pad is an ok option for budget-minded consumers who can deal with some slowness and a lackluster site builder. You also need to be comfortable with the limitations on multimedia restrictions. While you won't find it as nicely thought-through as some of the more full-service options, you can't beat the price. |
| Cheapest Plan: | $1.99/mo 3 years |
| 1 Year Plan: | $59.40/yr; $4.95/mo |
| $ Back Guarantee: | 30-day full refund, no refund after; $14.95 domain charge |
| Domain: | Free for 1 year |
| Support: | Email, Phone, Chat |
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