Rating:
(5/5) 
Currently rated as #1
What This Review Is Looking
At:
Cost Vs. Features & Support, Ecommerce, Servers
and Connectivity, Customer Service.
General Impressions:
Pros:
- A reputable company that has been around since
1999
- Competitive prices with low or no setup fees
- Tons of resources
- Multiple Websites on one account
- Offers both Linux and Windows
- Limited Time Free Setup on Windows (coupon
code "FSTP09")
- Excellent Customer Service with a live chat
available 24/7
- Miva Merchant (probably the best Ecommerce software
we've seen)
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
- Lots of extras like MailBoxCop SPAM/Virus filtering,
Miva Merchant, Site Symphony, Urchin
- Plesk 8 control panel
- Good reseller system
Cons:
- None that we can see so far
Cost
Vs. Features & Support:
Apollo Hosting's features are
one of its greatest strengths. The latest versions
of their shared hosting plans use the advanced Plesk
8 Control Panel. This is the most recent release
of the popular control panel software and offers
a lot of new features and improvements. The new
plans support hosting multiple websites on a single
account; which means you may end up paying much
less than most company's budget plans. Apollo offers
its own budget priced plan- "Value". Priced
starting at $6.96 a month with a 2 year sign-up,
it is a good plan for small, personal / hobby sites
or for a small business who isn't in the market
for a large ecommerce solution.
If you are in the market for something
more, the Business and Ecommerce plans are tailored
for high-volume sites, sites requiring greater security
or specialized resources supporting varied development
languages, such as ColdFusion, ASP, Java, C, C++,
or Ruby on Rails.
Apollo provides more extras than most
hosting companies on their larger plans, such as:
SSL, SSH, free merchant account setup, SPAM/Virus
filtering by MailBoxCop. No other hosting company
we have seen offers MailBoxCop to their customers.
Blogs, web traffic analysis, Google AdWords, and
SQL database support are include don every plan.
With all these features and multiple plans per account,
Apollo Hosting offers the most bang for the buck.
Their support is excellent. And you get huge discounts
if you prepay, up to 30% off.
Apollo offers Window Hosting plans
in addition to it's long running Linux shared plans.
These plans are great deals, offering unlimited
database and multiple websites starting with the
"Windows Plus" plan. For advanced ecommerce
sites or those requiring greater security, the "Windows
Pro" plan includes a dedicated IP, and the
availability of personall SSL certificates and the
Miva Merchant shopping cart. For a limited time
you can get free setup on any Windows plan using
the coupon code "FSTP09" when you sign
up.
Other improvements at Apollo are in
their reseller plans. Using a unique combination
of Virtual Environment technology and Plesk hosting
administration software, Apollo's new reseller plans
offer a lot of choice at a good price. Using the
Plesk system, resellers can now create their own
hosting plans and set their own prices. This is
a big leap forward for Apollo, as their previous
system only allowed resellers to use their old shared
plans at a discount. This new system gives resellers
a lot more options in how they want to run their
business.
Finally, one nice touch we like is
the free domain name with every hosting plan when
you pay for a year or more in advance.
Ecommerce:
Apollo Hosting offers the powerful Miva Merchant
shopping cart for a small installation fee on the
Ecommerce Pro plan. Apollo provides Silver Support
from Miva at a significant discount. With Silver
Support, the customer can call Miva directly with
tech support questions. They continue to provide
the latest version of Miva to new customers (and
old who wish to upgrade). Later versions of Miva
are compiled and run faster than previous versions.
It also works with Paypal so you can accept Paypal
instead of paying the expense of getting your own
merchant account. Entry level ecommerce capabilities
are available using osCommerce on the Business Plan,
for those who may wish to start with a more economical
hosting plan.
Servers & Connectivity:
Apollo Hosting customers have direct fiber optic
connections with Frontier GlobalCenter, Qwest Communications,
and Genuity, a division of GTE. These tier 1 providers
service such giants as Yahoo!, Netscape®, &
Ebay®. These facilities provide multiple OC12
connections and Qwest provides an OC192 connection,
which is above average.
Customer Service :
Apollo Hosting's customer support is 5 star. We
tried their online chat on different days and at
different times and always got someone quickly.
They have toll-free phone support 7 days a week
which is great when you just want to talk to someone
about your question. Overall they are an excellent
host to go with if you want to talk live with someone
day or night. They are very knowledgeable in Miva
Ecommerce software, and they have great online support
materials, including flash tutorials, a library
of reference materials, and a large, searchable
knowledgebase.
