Rating:
(4/5) 
Currently rated as #5
What This Review Is Looking
At:
Price and Cost Effectiveness, Data Center, Connectivity,
Customer Service;
General Impressions:
Pros:
- Host Unlimited Domains
- Drag & Drop SiteBuilder
- "Unlimited" websites on a single
account
- 24/ Phone support
Cons:
- "One Plan Wonder" with nowhere to go if you
ever need to upgrade
- Limited Ecommerce Options
Cost Vs. Features & Support:
HostMonster is a more recent entry in the field
of one plan hosts. Like any one-plan host, the
problem with upgrading always applies, but hopefully,
if you're shopping for the kind of plan you
think might need upgrading, this kind of host
won't be on your list. If you're looking for
decent accommodations for a personal, hobby,
or small business card site, then HostMonster
will meet your needs. The ample storage and
transfer should prove accommodating to most
simple needs, and they provide a wide selection
of open source applications for those budding
developers out there who want to code on a tight
budget. Of interest is the availability of the
lesser-known scripting language "Ruby on Rails",
which is not a common offering.
More common PHP, MySQL, joins well
known open source apps like Coppermine, Mambo,
and Joomla to round out the tools offerings. All
in all a good selection for a CPanel/Fantistco
host. The unlimited domains is a nice touch. The
room provided on the hosting account is good for
a few small sites, so you could certainly save
some cash if that's what you need. Obviously "unlimited"
is only "unlimited" until those 20 GB run out,
though.
Ecommerce:
Basically, this isn't the kind of host to consider
for any serious, mission critical online shopping
sites. They do provide the open-source Agora Cart
and osCommerce, sturdy if not quite feature rich
carts that will run basic stores.
Support for Zencart and osCommerce are now featured.
They support SSL for security and you can generate
a free cert, though unsigned certs aren't much
better than no cert at all.
Servers and Connectivity:
HostMonster claims they're running on Quad proc
Opterons, and the test site we set up responded
well. Keep in mind, no matter how powerful the
server, it can still be overloaded, the difference
is only where the threshold is breached. They
offer data backups, always a nice feature, and
run on a very impressive OC-48 backbone connection.
Customer Service:
HostMonster offers 24/7 tech support through their
email response system and phones. Response
was generally good, though the first level support
was prone to simply opening tickets, which we
could have done ourselves via their help desk.
Still, this is pretty much the norm as far as
first level support goes, so we can't knock
them too much on this. They provide the phone
support, which is a big plus over any host that
doesn't.
