Rochen is not a young hosting provider. It was started in 2003, and after over 13 years’ development, it now offers shared hosting, reseller hosting and managed cloud servers. For the shared hosting, Rochen claims that it always provides premium web hosting plans with great speed, reliability and security but affordable prices.
Once Rochen offered a single plan only for the premium web hosting, but in the recent days, the company has also released a single-domain plan for beginners and those who have low demands for the server resources.
The premium web hosting plans seem quite affordable, and they include good features. However, we have seen numerous bitter comments and complaints about the technical support which is said to be helpless.
To help you find out whether the premium web hosting from Rochen is the right solution for you, we will present the pros and cons of the service in this review.
Pros of Rochen Premium Web Hosting
Although the user base is not large, Rochen premium web hosting plans are quite feature rich, and they deliver very good uptime and speed.
Rich features for shared hosting users
The two shared hosting plans offered by Rochen are differentiated by the number of hosted sites, monthly visits and disk storage. Here is the detailed information.
- One Site: $4.95/mo, supporting 1 website, 20 GB SSD storage and 25,000 page views per month.
- Multiple Sites: $8.95/mo, supporting unlimited websites, 60 GB SSD storage and 100,000 page views per month.
Except for these differences, all the other features included in the plans are the same. The good ones that are worth your attention include:
- Development features: PHP 5.2-5.6, PHP 7, Python, Perl, MySQL, Git, SVN, SSH & SFTP.
- An easy-to-use My Rochen portal which can be used to manage support tickets, domains, servers, etc.
- cPanel control panel for website management.
- A free domain, free transfers of 10 websites which use cPanel & free website backups.
- Unlimited email accounts with virus scanning.
Note that Ruby or Ruby on Rails is not supported on Rochen shared servers.
It offers good uptime
Rochen owns servers in multiple data centers which are located in the US and the UK. The data centers are built with security in mind, and the network is designed with redundancy. Besides, the following things also contribute to a stable and secure hosting environment.
- CloudLinux OS is installed on all servers to ensure a high level of reliability.
- Rochen offers redundant servers. When there is a hardware failure, a backup server comes into use.
- A WAF (Web Application Firewall) is provided to prevent SQL injection and CSS attacks.
These facts should be the main reasons why we find that Rochen can offer 99.9% uptime for most of the hosted sites. You can read the recent uptime in below.
The hosting speed is good
The speed of Rochen web hosting services is not as excellent as the uptime, but it is still good for the small-sized websites which don’t have a lot of tasks to execute. With a number of technologies like website segregation and CloudFlare CDN, Rochen can meet most expectations.
According to our monitoring, Rochen consumes about 500ms in the server response speed. This is slower than the fast web hosts like InMotion Hosting, but non-eCommerce sites will find it quite good.
Cons of Rochen Premium Web Hosting
Rochen indeed does well in uptime, speed and the hosting features. However, there are reasons why it is not ranked among the top shared hosting choices. An apparent reason, then, is the helpless technical support which is complained frequently.
The technical support is disappointing
Unlike most US hosting providers which provide technical support through all the popular ways like live chat and phone, Rochen has a ticket system only. This company doesn’t offer any live chat system. Even though there are some phone numbers available on the contact page, those numbers are only used for sales inquiries. The lack of live chat and phone number makes it hard to get instant help when you have simple yet emergent issues which require solutions from the hosting provider.
Another disappointing thing with Rochen is that there is no knowledgebase or user forum. When you have any question, there is no choice but to submit a ticket. This makes Rochen quite different from the main hosting providers.
For the ticket support, the replies are quick, but this doesn’t mean quick solutions. According to those user reviews, Rochen support agents usually reply tickets within two hours, but it takes two days or longer for them to offer a real solution.
It lacks hosting plans and scalability
It is true that Rochen provides two shared hosting plans to meet different needs. However, when your site grows larger, there is no right hosting solution because the company doesn’t provide any VPS.
Managed cloud servers are available, but they charge high fees starting from $200/mo, which is not suitable for most individuals and small businesses. The gap between shared hosting and the managed cloud servers is a big downside.
The refund guarantee is not well explained
For the premium web hosting plans, Rochen promises 30-day refund, which is acceptable and reasonable. However, we are unsure whether the guarantee is true because the company doesn’t mention it in the Terms of Service.
In the TOS, Rochen says it provides refunds for cancellations within 15 days, which is confusing. Besides, no detailed refund policies are offered, so you may not know which services are non-refundable.
Considering these facts, we’d suggest you make the refund policies clear by calling the sales number before signing up with Rochen.
Conclusion – Rochen Is Not Among the Best
It is undeniable that Rochen provides rich-featured and reliable shared hosting services. But the lack of professional technical support and scalability makes the company not the right choice for most webmasters.
If you have planned the growth of your website, or you rely on the hosting provider for technical support, we would recommend the following web hosts instead of Rochen. All these web hosts have a wide service range and a support team which is reachable via phone, email and live chat at any time.
