Hostwinds

Hostwinds should be on your radar if you want a powerful and flexible web hosting service. Hostwinds offers a variety of shared, virtual private server (VPS), dedicated, cloud, WordPress, and reseller hosting packages aimed at both small businesses and larger corporations. Hostwinds’ feature-rich VPS and reseller offerings earn it our choice in those categories.

Plans and Pricing

Hostwinds provides a variety of hosting services, including shared, VPS, reseller, WordPress, dedicated, and cloud hosting. They offer multiple VPS plan categories, white-label reseller hosting, web application hosting, and business hosting.

Hostwinds’ hosting plans feature a 72-hour refund policy, which begins upon confirmation of your initial payment. Payment options include Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, and cryptocurrency.

Shared Hosting

Hostwinds doesn’t specifically endorse any shared hosting plan. The primary distinction between the plans is the number of domains provided. Each plan includes the most recent cPanel, Weebly site builder, unlimited FTP accounts, free dedicated IP, solid-state drives, and SSL certificates.

Tip: Hostwinds’ shared hosting plans are ideal for freelancers, professionals, and small businesses seeking to create and manage their own websites.

VPS Hosting

Linux Managed

Hostwinds offers an extensive selection of Managed Linux plans, allowing you to choose the one with the appropriate storage and bandwidth for your enterprise. All plans include enterprise firewalls, custom ISOs, snapshots, nightly backups, server monitoring, and numerous other features.

Tip: Hostwinds’ Linux managed hosting plans are ideal for medium-sized businesses seeking flexibility while maintaining network privacy.

Windows Managed

Similar to the Linux-managed VPS plan, Hostwinds does not advocate for any particular plan within its Windows-managed category. All these plans feature enterprise hardware, solid-state drives, custom ISOs, a friendliness guarantee, and many other benefits.

Tip: Hostwinds’ Windows VPS hosting is ideal for expanding businesses uncertain of their traffic requirements. This hosting plan is virtual and supports immediate scalability.

Linux Unmanaged

Hostwinds’ Unmanaged Linux VPS plans are a more cost-effective alternative to their managed counterparts. In this case, you’ll use the cloud portal and supplementary tools to manage your website independently. You’ll still have access to standard features like nightly backups, server monitoring, custom ISOs, and more.

Tip: Hostwinds’ unmanaged Linux VPS plans are ideal for expanding businesses seeking affordable private web hosting with adaptable scalability.

Windows Unmanaged

Hostwinds offers a more affordable option for Windows managed VPS hosting with their unmanaged plans. These plans are instantly scalable and include nightly backups. All the distinctive features of Hostwinds’ VPS plans apply to these as well.

Tip: Hostwinds’ Windows unmanaged VPS plans are ideal for businesses dealing with sensitive information and fluctuating traffic, such as seasonal eCommerce businesses that experience increased sales during their peak seasons and may require additional website capacity.

Dedicated Hosting

Hostwinds provides dedicated hosting plans that are highly customizable, allowing you to add more storage, RAM, and bandwidth for an additional cost.

Tip: Hostwinds dedicated servers are well-suited for large organizations and established businesses requiring secure hosting for sensitive client data. Industries such as hotels, hospitals, and large eCommerce businesses can find the appropriate hosting plan within this category.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting plan features closely resemble those of shared hosting plans, offering unlimited databases, email accounts, FTP accounts, and subdomains. Additionally, your clients will have access to the latest cPanel and 24/7 support.

Tip: Hostwinds’ reseller hosting plan is ideal for entrepreneurs, web developers, and agencies looking to provide web hosting services to their customers.

WordPress Hosting

Hostwinds’ WordPress hosting plans include Softaculous auto-install, Weebly website builder, unlimited domains, and the most recent cPanel.

Tip: Hostwinds WordPress web hosting is ideal for businesses seeking WordPress-specific designs for their websites.

Cloud Server Hosting

Hostwinds doesn’t endorse any particular plan within its cloud server category. The main distinction lies in the higher plans providing more CPUs, RAM, storage, and bandwidth.

Tip: Hostwinds cloud server plans are an excellent choice for businesses seeking a secure web hosting package at a reasonable cost.

Hostwinds Features

• Shared; VPS; Dedicated; Cloud; Reseller; WordPress hosting
• Softaculous Auto installer
• Free SSL certificate
• Latest cPanel
• Unlimited databases
• Solid State Drives

Hostwinds provides several distinctive features for its VPS and cloud server hosting plans, such as snapshots, firewalls, volumes, and load balancers.

Snapshots enable you to create a real-time, full backup of your Linux VPS and deploy a series of pre-configured Linux servers with just a few clicks. The enterprise firewall adds an extra layer of security, while volumes offer additional storage space. Load balancers assist in distributing traffic across multiple servers, improving efficiency and uptime.

Performance

When searching for a web hosting provider, it’s crucial to consider three key performance metrics: server speed, uptime, and loading time.

• Server speed refers to the rate at which a user on your website receives data from the host’s server.
• Uptime indicates the reliability of your host’s servers in staying online.
• Loading time measures the duration it takes for your web pages to load when customers visit your website.

Higher server speed and faster loading times result in a smoother customer experience, leading to a lower bounce rate for your website.

Hostwinds offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee to all their clients. To assess the accuracy of this claim, I conducted a speed and load time test using GTMetrix on a website hosted by Hostwinds.

Here are the results:

The website exhibited an ultra-fast response time (time to first byte) of 51ms and a fully loaded time of 2.4s.

The website’s overall performance was outstanding at 98%, which is significantly above average.

Customer Support

Hostwinds provides 24/7 customer support through phone, web chat, and ticket-based systems. We tried the chat support on a weekday evening and never waited more than a minute for a Hostwinds representative to address our questions. The support agent effectively explained the differences between shared and VPS hosting.

We also contacted customer support on a weeknight to inquire about Hostwinds’ Minecraft hosting. The amiable representative offered clear and easy-to-understand information. Overall, we were pleased with Hostwinds’ customer support experience.

Hostwinds used to offer an impressive 60-day money-back guarantee, but this has changed. Now, the company grants refunds for requests made within 72 hours of order purchase. This falls short of the typical 30-day money-back guarantees provided by most companies. This brief window leaves little time to determine if you want to continue with the service. Furthermore, the cancellation button is not easily accessible. To cancel your Hostwinds account, you’ll need to navigate through the account management section.

Conclusion

Even with its brief refund period, Hostwinds continues to be among the top web hosting providers. It offers excellent customer service, dependable uptime, and competitively priced hosting plans that cater to a diverse clientele and businesses. Notably, Hostwinds is recognized as the Editors’ Choice in the reseller and VPS subcategories. For those seeking reliable, comprehensive Windows hosting (which Hostwinds does not provide), the exceptional AccuWeb is a great option.