Hostony Review

"The best thing about this plan is not just its size. It has everything packed inside - PHP, MySQL, FrontPage extensions, subdomains, telnet, SSL, shopping cart & more."

$6.85/month (Free Setup; 2 year plan) 400 GB disk space;
4,100 GB Bandwidth, Free Domain Name for life

Overview

Hostony was founded in 2001 and has since established itself as a leading website hosting provider. They offer 2 different shared budget hosting plans - both under $10/month for extended plans. The PROFI plan is just $6.85/month for the 1 year contract, and the SPECIAL plan is just $9.85 for 2 years prepay.

The PROFI plan allows you to host up to 20 domains under the same account, while the SPECIAL Plan allows unlimited domains!

Plan Size and Features

The PROFI plan comes with 400 GB of disk space and 4,100 GB of bandwidth. The best thing about this plan is that it seems to have everything packed inside - PHP, MySQL, FrontPage extensions, subdomains, telnet, SSL, shopping cart and more. Simply check the features chart on your left to see exactly what is offered. Also, take a look at the comparison chart at their web site (via the Shared Hosting link) and you'll be surprised at the amount of features you get from this plan!

This plan uses CPanel as the control panel software, which is our favorite. To learn more about the benefits of CPanel, please read our LunarPages review.

Since they offer other larger plans, you may choose to upgrade your account at any time when you need more disk space or bandwidth. The next larger plan would be the $9.85 SPECIAL plan with 600 GB of disk space and 6,100 GB of bandwidth. It is really difficult to finish up the disk space and bandwidth allocated by the PROFI plan. A better reason to upgrade to SPECIAL plan is the benefit to host unlimited domain names (websites). So instead of purchasing more hosting accounts, you can upgrade to the SPECIAL plan when you want to host more websites under a single, large-sized hosting plan. Just keep in mind that the PROFI Plan allows you to host up to 20 domains, and that may very well be enough.

Customer Support

We have received a lot of positive feedback about Hostony's services, most of which attested to great customer support. We also tested support out ourselves by sending numerous emails to them, and like other customer's claims, they replied promptly. Overall, we are very satisfied with their response speed.

To request support, you can submit a ticket through their support desk, or you may simply email support@hostony.com. Like LunarPages and PowWeb, they also offer a support forum. You may ask anything here, including your pre-sales questions. The forum is quite active, and now has over 3,500 members.

A disadvantage of Hostony is that all support must go through email, support desk, or the forum since phone support is not available. However, Hostony now offers live chat, albeit the service is not 24/7.

Free Domain Name

They will register a free domain name for you if you purchase any plan from them. The hosting account must be used to host this new domain. As long as you maintain your hosting account with them, you don't even need to pay for any renewal fees in the future! However, if you choose to leave Hostony one day, you will need to pay $14.85 for that domain name.

Order Process

You can choose to pay with major credit cards or through PayPal. You can't pay with check or money order. The signup process is rather simple - just pick your domain name and make the payment.

Advice

As we stated earlier, there is no phone support available. Beyond this, Hostony is a very nice hosting service, and you can expect quick response from their help desk and forum. If you choose to host with Hostony, you should also consider their SPECIAL plan because it allows you to host unlimited sites/domains and offers a little extra disk space and bandwidth. You may also want to read other reviews of the top 10 hosts before you make any decision, such as LunarPages review & iPowerWeb review.