Rating:
(4.5/5) 
Currently rated as #2
What This Review Is Looking
At:
Price and Cost Effectiveness, Data Center, Connectivity,
Customer Service;
General Impressions:
Pros:
- Budget prices and low setup fees
- Advanced Virtual Environment hosting system
- Multiple Websites on one account
- 24/7 technical support
- Miva Merchant ecommerce package
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
- MailBoxCop SPAM/Virus filtering, MySQL, Java
Servlets are available
- Site Symphony web design tool
Cons:
- No monthly payment plan on smallest plan
Cost Vs. Features & Support:
Infinity offers strong hosting for the budget-minded
consumer. This review focuses on their Budget
VPS hosting plans. Recently Infinity
added a selection of powerful, though pricey,
Root VPS plans and these
plans will not be considered in this review.
The Budget VPS plans Infinity
offers are something fairly unique in the budget
hosting world. It is a step beyond the usual shared
hosting, in that the Virtual Private hosting provides
a higher degree of security and insulation between
clients on a server. Clients each get their own
IPs and partitions of the server's hard drives.
This helps to prevent problems from 'noisy neighbors'
whose sites try to monopolize memory, bandwidth,
and processor time. Each individual VPS runs its
own "sendmail"
process. This may not seem like a big deal, but
if you've ever had your email bounced because
the server your site is hosted on has been 'blacklisted'
because a spammer occupies it as well, you'll
appreciate this.
Very few budget hosts provide their
plans on anything but the standard shared hosting
servers. Infinity definitely distinguishes itself
in this regard. VPS is hot new hosting technology,
and we're suitably impressed they are providing
it at budget prices, and providing extensive support
to go along with it.
Their smallest Budget VPS plan, the
Starter, provides a cost-effective solution for
small personal or business hosting needs. At $11.95
a month (2 year prepay), it is ideal for people
looking to test the hosting waters cheaply. Unlike
the 1-plan hosts, Infinity is prepared to meet
the needs of those sites that become successful
and need a place to grow effectively. They offer
a good online web design tool as well, a must for
any budget host. Site Symphony allows even novice
web users the opportunity to create a visually
appealing site without having to hire a designer
or even pay for a template. For those interested
in more advanced programming techniques, Infinity’s
larger plans include JSP and MySQL. Finally,
Infinity allows customers to set up multiple web
sites on a single account.
Ecommerce:
Infinity offers the popular and effective Miva
Merchant on its largest Budget VPS plan. Miva
is a solid, feature packed cart that will handle
most any online store. The 1000Mb of disk space
provided on the Beyond Infinity plan will allow
for fairly large sized stores. The only drawback
is Miva is not directly integrated with the
Site Symphony design system, though users can
easily craft a page that will link customers
right to the storefront provided by Miva.
Servers and Connectivity:
Infinity runs their own Dell P4 2GHz machines. These
powerful machines keep their customer sites running
smoothly and quickly. The datacenter in which they
are housed has all the security and redundancy you
would expect from a large operation, so you can
feel safe your site won’t go down due to power
outages or connectivity problems.
Customer Service:
Infinity provides 24/7 support via online chat,
which is a popular support option among hosts these
days. They do have toll free phone support available
on a daily basis between 8AM and 6PM CST, including
weekends. There is also a wealth of online support
information in the form of a Knowledgebase and FAQ,
as well as an online Help Desk system that, like
chat, is manned 24/7. Infinity’s online support
also includes some nice Flash tutorials that not
only walk new users through their control panel
software, but also provide quick information on
various types of web design programs. Our only minor
issue with the support system is the lack of 24/7
phone support, as some customers, especially those
new to web hosting, do prefer to talk to reps on
the phone.
