HostPapa Full Review: Economic and Eco-friendly
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With the world moving towards the digital age, owning a website is turning from a luxury into a necessity as time passes. Whether it’s a new start-up business or an established one, companies are compelled nowadays to form a website to thrive. HostPapa is a green-friendly website hosting provider with relatively cheap hosting plans that appeal to start-ups and individuals. We at several.com will review HostPapa for you, so you can rest assured that you’re making the right choice.
Pros
Cons
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Quick Stats
Are you thinking of changing your web host? You'll get free migration with HostPapa.
Thinking about security? There's a free SSL certificate with every plan.
Not only that, but unlimited bandwidth, storage, and emails. And did I mention that choosing HostPapa will help you save the planet because they're environmentally friendly? Keep reading to find out all there is to know about HostPapa.
HostPapa's Hosting Types
Hostpapa offers various hosting plans. These include:
- Shared Hosting: For small-medium businesses, more is mentioned about shared hosting below.
- VPS Hosting: VPS stands for virtual private server; this web hosting type is useful for websites with high traffic. Your website won’t share its resources with others on the same server. It also provides a higher level of control and personalized management. It is highly customizable and safer when used as other websites that might be compromised are on a different server.
- WordPress Hosting: If you want to host your WordPress website, HostPapa offers plans starting from $3.95/month.
- Reseller Hosting: If you want to resell your server to third parties. HostPapa has a variety of plans starting from $29.99/month.
Depending on what you need, choose one of the four hostings provided. It's important to note that we're here today to focus on shared hosting.
If you're looking to start your website and get some traffic while paying a reasonable price, then shared hosting is what you want. Luckily, HostPapa offers three shared hosting plans depending on your choice. Let's take a look:
| Starter | Business | Business Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Websites | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Domain Name | Included | Included | Included |
| Storage | 100 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SSL Certificate | Included | Included | Included |
| Emails | 100 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Individual Mailbox Storage | 500 MB | 500 MB | 1000 MB |
| 1-Click App Installer | Included | Included | Included |
| Website Builder | Starter (2-Pages) | Starter (2-Pages) | Business (100-Pages) |
| Cloudflare CDN | Included | Included | Included |
| Starting Price | $3.95/month | $3.95/month | $12.95/month |
| Renewal Price | $9.99/month | $14.99/month | $23.99/month |
All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Pricing
HostPapa provides one of the best budget-friendly plans, offering new start-ups and individuals a compelling hosting package at a low price with no compromise in quality. One of their selling points is the green eco-friendliness, as the company relies entirely on renewable energy in its activities. However, one of the downfalls is the rigidness of plan customization in terms of time, as it only provides its bundles in periods of 12, 24, and 36 months for shared hosting plans.
Payment Methods
HostPapa's payments can be made through credit cards, debit cards, and PayPal.
Ease of Use
HostPapa is another user-friendly web hosting service. After choosing a plan, you proceed with the payment process. Unfortunately, there are a few add-ons you might want to un-tick them. Afterward, you'll have to choose a domain name and fill in some personal information to proceed with the payment.
Overall, it's an easy process, but the add-ons are annoying, and you have a hard time figuring out how to remove them.
Customer Support
HostPapa provides 24/7 customer support available to clients through live chat, e-mail contact, phone calls, and a support center filled with useful information, including video tutorials. The phone support they provide is in four languages, including English, French, Spanish, and German. My contact with the support team using the live chat feature proved swift and direct to the point.
They answered my questions after a brief min of waiting time.
Security
To earn your visitors' trust, it's better to have a secure website. So, what does HostPapa provide in terms of security? Let's see:
SSL Certificate
The Let’s Encrypt secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption provides website security, placing your website higher on search engines as a secure website. This is essential, especially if you're creating an online store.
Password Protected Directories
If you're looking to use passwords to protect certain areas of your website or your entire website, you can do so. To know how to do it, you can refer to their knowledge base or contact their customer support.
Spam Assassin Protection
For a safer email, spam assassin protection is used to filter your emails safely or spam. It's essential to protect you from spam emails, and all HostPapa's plans come with spam assassin protection.
Firewall & DDoS Protection
HostPapa's shared hosting plans come with a firewall and DDoS protection, which is essential to protect your website from any attack. This is important to have a safer website for your visitors.
Network Monitoring
No need to worry about your servers or uptime with HostPapa. They monitor their servers to make sure everything is under control to keep your website safe and secure.
Site Backup
Automated backup is an extra feature in the startup and business plan. However, if you purchase the Business Pro plan, you'll get a 1GB backup. You can always purchase extra backup as an add-on.
Load Times, Reliability, & Features
Uptime & Speed
There's a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but is HostPapa trustable? Yes, they definitely are. Your website will almost always be accessible for your customers.
When it comes to speed, although it's not the fastest, it's still acceptable and will get you the customers you need.
Features
HostPapa's plans are fully featured in terms of security and everything you need. Here's a list of features available with HostPapa's shared hosting plans:
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Unlimited storage
- 1-click app installer
- Free site migration
- Free Cloudflare CDN
- Limited website builder
- Email addresses
- Custom error message
- Easy to use cPanel
All of these are excellent features to host your website.
SEO
Well, to get a better ranking, you need to have a fast, secure website. Luckily, when choosing HostPapa, you have both of these options. If you're interested to know more about getting a higher ranking, you should read more about on-page SEO on HostPapa's blog.
For Advanced Users
Tools included for advanced users include:
- Different versions of PHP 5 & 7
- MySQL database
- Python
- FTP Accounts
- FTP Access
To be honest, this might be enough for some users, but others might prefer looking at HostGator or Bluehost for more developer-friendly tools.
Custom Error Page
HostPapa allows you to custom error pages from the cPanel. There's an article in the knowledge base that guides you on how to do it. As a result, your customers will get a unique and more professional error message in case it's not accurate.
Server Location
The best part about using HostPapa is they have servers worldwide. Whether in the United States, Australia, Middle East, China, Europe, Africa, or Asia, there's a server for HostPapa. They have servers in 102 cities in 50 countries.
Website Building
The website builder is easy to use. Adding text, images, maps, videos, and widgets can be done quickly with a drag and drop style. HostPapa has a preview feature allowing you to view how your site will look like on both mobile and desktop before publishing. This makes HostPapa's website builder a useful online store set up with multiple useful features.
E-Commerce Features
In terms of e-commerce websites, HostPapa is a good choice. With the enterprise plan, the online store e-commerce setup provides many useful features such as inventory tracking. It can integrate with payment services like Paypal and Stripe. It can be set up fast and is easy to build with a drag and drop style.
Add-on services
These can be bought for extra; they include Protection Power Website Security, an add-on feature to protect from hacking, and malicious wares costing $19.95/year. A daily Automated Website Backup that saves up to seven entries costing $19.95/year. A “Single SSL Certificate” provides extra security and is often mandatory when a credit card payment is required on business websites; it costs $14.95/year. PapaCare+ is a feature that provides you with a team of IT specialists at your disposal to make sure your website is running smoothly and securely with no issues.
Conclusion
Should I go for HostPapa? HostPapa can provide you with a hard-to-pass deal with its competitive prices and high efficacy if you are a new start-up company or an individual starting. A 30-day money-back guarantee gives you the ability to try the server, while the free transfer feature allows you to change whenever you want. In addition, HostPapa is one of the green options helping the environment through their activities and policies.