Recently we find some of our readers are concerned about WebHostingPad Drupal hosting service. Their concerns are not groundless. This company claims to offer quality hosting plans at an unbelievably low price. But there are plenty of complaints and negative feedbacks regarding to their products and services.
Pricing
This company offers 2 web hosting plans named as Power Plan and Power Plan Plus, with a starting price of $1.99/mo and $3.99/mo. This is indeed affordable. But note that this price is only valid for 3/4/5 year subscription. As a matter of fact, the price for an annual Power Plan charges at least $3.99/mo. And the shortest billing circle must be a whole year.
Many users were attracted by and trapped into their three year plans. When they signed up, they were promised a 30-day money back guarantee. When they found the products unsatisfying and canceled services within the refund period, they found their credit cards were automatically billed for the next few months.
Such cases are not rare. Although WebHostingPad promises no hidden fees or gimmicks, we detected dishonesty in their pricing. We warn our readers do not purchase any plan from a new host for so long a term.
Features
The Power Plan offers rich features including MySQL databases and PHP to support Drupal hosting. Resources such as disk space, monthly bandwidth, hosted domains, emails accounts are unlimited. Softaculous script support and cPanel are included for quick installation of applications and easy site management.
The Power Plan Plus offers more services including SSL certificate, SSH access, advanced spam filter and security scan. E-commerce features are only available with Power Plans Plus. To be honest, such features are so common that many companies include them in their most basic plans, for example, the Launch Plan from InMotion Hosting.
We hosted a Drupal site on their Power Plan. Last month our account got suspended several times because of overusing resources. Truth to be told, we never exceeded the CPU limit. Then this company sent us emails kindly suggesting us purchasing their VPS plans. This is just a common trick played by some lesser hosts. Don’t get hooked.
Uptime & Speed
WebHostingPad claims that its data center guarantees an uptime of 99.999%. To achieve this, it places Dual Xeon Intel Raid protected servers in its data center which features redundant fiber connections, Tier-1 network, multi-layer security control procedures, Missubishi UPS system, fire suppression and temperature control.
These technologies do help to deliver sound performance. During the past one month or so, its uptime reached 99.94% and the server response time averaged 792ms. But the plain fact is that it has only one data center. When serious downtime occurs, which is rare but not seldom, there is no standby data center to take over. What’s worse, there is no compensation for downtime.
Technical Support
Here comes the worst part. The company explicitly promises to offer US-based support via live chat, toll-free phone and email 24/7. This is far from true. When technical issue arises, they just turn their back on customers.
Last month, we experienced a serious downtime, so we called for help. The line was busy at first. When we finally got through to the support department, the line was disconnected. That was really an awful experience.
Conclusion
With all aspects reviewed, we do not recommend WebHostingPad for Drupal hosting or whatever type of hosting. The price and refund guarantee are deceptive, the features are complete but common, the performance is OK but not perfect, and the support just irritates everyone.
We do not want to see more people become WebHostingPad’s victims. Actually, there are many trustworthy companies capable of offering quality Drupal hosting services at reasonable prices. InMotion Hosting, A2Hosting and GreenGeeks are the three good examples.
