I have been hosting some of my websites with Site5 for about 1.5 – 2 years now. Here is my review for site5 based on my own personal experience with them
Why did i choose Site5 Web Hosting for my websites?
I got to know about Site5 through a online web hosting forum. At that time, I was searching for a reliable and reputable cheap website hosting company for a couple of my new websites. And I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about Site5 and so decide to try them out. Since they have a 60 day money back guarantee, I figure if I did not like it, I would simply get my money back due to there promise.
Site5 Hosting Plan
Site5 only offer two types of hosting plan : shared and reseller. I took on the reseller account and they offered me this:
- 12 GB Disk Space /Month
- 1TB bandwidth /Month
- 3 IP Addresses
- FREE Setup
- Unlimited Website Domains / Cpanels
- 60-Day Money Back Guarantee
It also comes with fantastico, cpanel. All this for about $180 annually which is pretty cheap. This plan is still available but may not be for ever. Go to www.site5.com. It is basically the same as my previous plan except for more disk space and bandwidth. As I’m writing this, they have a promotion on at the moment for $5 / Month you can receive UNLIMITED Bandwidth, UNLIMITED Domains, UNLIMITED Web Space. The only thing with this is.. to get it for $5.00 / Month you really need to sign up for 60 Months. Lets face you wont need to worry about hosting for a while and don’t forget you have a 60 Day return on your hosting as well… Not A Bad Deal!
Unique Features of Site5 web hosting
One feature I like about site5 hosting is the multi-site accounts. It is basically a full featured control panel for each domain. Unlike other shared web hosting companies which uses domain pointers, a multi site accounts exists on its own with its own sub-domains, domain pointer, ftp, mysql etc. This help me to organize my websites better especially if you have a lot of domains. You can set the disk space and bandwidth from the main pool of your web hosting account.
The other feature is the flashback which allows you to undo any changes you make to your website. It is a life saver especially when a website breaks down and you do not know the cause.
I give a big thumbs up to Site5 Web Hosting. An i totally recommend them as a reliable web host giving 24 / 7 Support over live chat as well.
With a reseller account do you have to be a bit of a technical expert? Do they still give you technical help as they do with the basic plan?
All plans through site5.com i believe give excellent support. I for one have been a great supporter of site5 as i have has an account with them for a couple of years now, and never had any real dramas with them. I can comfortably say they yes, there support would cover all plans.
I’m a Ruby on Rails developer who will be leaving Site5 as soon as possible. People can be emotional when discussing poor web hosts, but I’ll stick to the facts.
Uneducated choices in software:
Ruby version 1.8.5
Rails version 1.2.5
These are both UNSTABLE releases. Production releases are even-numbered for these packages. The production versions are ruby 1.8.6, and rails 1.2.6.
Outdated software:
The current rails version is 2.10. Rails 2.x has been available since November of last year, and can easily be installed alongside older versions of rails.
Poor Support:
There is no phone support for tech, only for sales. Their ticket system’s response time is awful. I have an active ticket right now, my sites are DOWN. Here are my wait times after supplying the info they request:
Initial Ticket: 6 paragraphs explaining a problem with 8 apps across 4 accounts.
Entire Response (10 hours later): “Please provide us with some examples of site not working and we’ll look into the issue.”
My Reply: provided 8 failing applications on the server, and suggested that their outdated and unstable releases of ruby and rails might be a cause.
Entire Response (4 hours later): “Rails 1.2.5 is installed on this server. If you want another version you will need install this yourself into your own account.”
My Reply: I explained that their answer does not help, and with 8 applications (unchanged for months) failing across 4 different accounts, it is clearly a server issue.
Their Response (5 hours and counting): none yet.
I’d be happy to provide a verbatim transcript of this trouble ticket upon request.
If the last 24 hours were my only downtime for the year, this would be about 99.7% uptime (not good). Of course, my sites could have been down for as long as 3 weeks, which is the last time I saw them working. I just noticed they were down yesterday. Also, I’ve had 3-4 days of downtime this year, and server requests for rails apps often fail randomly.
Make your own judgements. I’m strictly offering you the facts on my experience with Site5.
Hi Jaime,
Hmmmm im sorry to hear that you have had so much trouble with site5, i was always in favour of them, due to there support thay had given me. I dont code in ROR and that is possibly why i haven’t had the issues you have had.
Thanks for your comments and review.
Hi guys, do u know ixwebhosting. It is one of the best hosting companies of the world. Now they are offering a price-off and I wanna let you know.
The basic hosting plan:
Unlimited Domains
Unlimited Transfer
Unlimited Web Space
1 Free Domain Regs
1 Dedicated IPs
Ecommerce Ready
MySQL, PHP, PERL, ASP, Python, JSP, and Ruby on Rails.
Note the best thing is that this package costs as low as only $4.95/mo. You can go to their official site IxWebhosting.com for more info. It won’t last for too long.
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