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Started in 2008, JustHost is one of the first hosting companies to adopt the one-size-fits-all hosting model. It was started by Chris Phillips, the famous UK entrepreneur, under the Just Develop It Group of companies. The business model was to offer customer friendly services as well as cheap web hosting and reseller hosting packages to businesses and individuals alike.
The company grew very fast and by 2010, it announced that it had reached a client base of 200,000 customers. This placed them amongst the top 50 web hosting companies in the whole world. This did not come as a surprise to many given that in 2010 it won the Best Reseller Hosting Provider award from hosting review sites after having won the best customer service award the previous years. Over the years, it continued winning a myriad of awards from different webhosting groups.
During these early years, JustHost.com was the darling to many a business around the world. This led to the eventual buy out by Endurance International Group (EIG) for an undisclosed account. There are a lot of murmurs online about the quality of service offered after this acquisition and that is what we shall discuss in this review.
Justhost web hosting products and features
Justhost.com has stuck to its core business offering web hosting services. Though you can still buy domain names from them their core still remains web hosting at low prices. Their main products are Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting and, the most important to them, Shared Hosting.
1. Shared hosting
Shared hosting is the core product for the company and is targeted at business owners and individuals who want full functionality for their sites on a small budget. With plans starting at only $6.99 a month, they are very attractive to small business owners.
Some of the features that their Shared hosting has include:
- UNLIMITED GBs Hosting Space
- FREE Domain Name Registration
- UNLIMITED Email Accounts
- FREE Instant Setup
- UNLIMITED Data Transfer
- FREE Site Builder
- UNLIMITED Domain Hosting
- CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MySQL,
- 24/7 Technical Support
- Domain Hosting,
- SSL, FTP, Stats
The shared hosting other than providing a free domain name is also very attractive to small business because of the ecommerce facilities available for each package.
2. VPS Hosting
For those who have outgrown their shared hosting environment, Justhost provides a very good VPS hosting platform. Starting at only $14.99 a month, the package offers very good value for money. Other than the size of the disk server and the bandwidth, all the VPS services come with:
- Cloud Technology
- Root Access
- Enhanced cPanel Control Panel
- Instant Provisioning
- Multi-account Provisioning
They claim to utilize advanced cloud technology such as OpenStack and KVM which should give their servers unprecedented speeds.
3. Dedicated Hosting
Though they don’t advertise this service as they do the Shared Hosting Plans, it is still one that you can take a look at.
Starting at the offer price of $74.99 in the first month and $149.99 later, you can start off with with a Dual Core, 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon Processor with 4GB of Ram and 500 GB of disk space. For most starting on dedicated servers, that is a reasonably priced dedicated server.
All their dedicated server offerings also come with:
- Instant Provisioning
- Mirrored Storage
- Root Access
- Enhanced Caching
- Enhanced CPanel
- Dedicated Support
They claim to have their servers’ custom built to make it faster and easier for you to manage.
Infrastructure, reliability, support and user experience
For a long time Justhost was simply one of the most reliable webhosting companies in the world. Their 99% uptime guarantee was set in stone. Their customer support as you have seen above was voted as one of the best in the world.
However, for the past few months, their infrastructure has been a let down to the company. A case in point was the total network failures that happened in August and December 2013 and also April 16th – 17th in 2014 and again on May 19th 2014. These outages affected nearly all the EIG acquired hosting companies including Hostgator. The majority of complaints though came from Justhost.com clients.
Initially, their datacenters were located in Chicago, Illinois. But with these outages one can guess that they are now to be hosted in Provo, Utah.
Other than these major outages, their customer care can still be viewed as good compared to other hosting companies. Their website shows a 24/7 Live Technical support phone line and also a Live Chat facility. The only concern is that one doesn’t know where their customer support reps are located in the world.
JusHost advantages
- Their entry level pricing package is suitable for those on a budget and want to get their sites started
- You will get a money-back guarantee for the service
- Easy one click navigation of their CPanel for novices and experts
- Unlimited bandwidth is essential especially for novices
- A free domain name added to your package reducing your costs
- Backed by the largest web hosting company in the world Endurance International Group (EIG)
JustHost disadvantages
- Recent major outages have been a big concern
- One plan fits all package may not suit everyone
- Higher than industry average costs for their dedicated servers
Overall JustHost review
There are a lot of people who claim to miss the original Justhost.com before it was bought by EIG. The buyout stripped JustHost off its most important asset that is customer service.
While it may be true that there is very little that a hosting company can do on major network failures, the fact is that this should be a rare event. Their products are otherwise some of the best in the whole web hosting industry. Few companies are able to offer you with a free domain name just to host with them. In all, if you are looking for a cheap hosting company that has a long history of offering good services, then Justhost.com should be in your shortlist.
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