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Hostwinds Review
Hostwinds Review
Hostwinds Review
Hostwinds Review
October 20, 2022 / Michael Graw
Hostwinds Review
Hostwinds Review
October 20, 2022 / Michael Graw

At A Glance

Hostwinds offers affordable shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans with features for web designers of all levels. Shared hosting includes unlimited solid-state storage and bandwidth, plus access to cPanel and the Softaculous one-click installer. The Weebly website builder is also included at no additional cost. Hostwinds promises 99.9999% uptime and offers 24/7 customer support.

Bandwidth: Unlimited

Free marketing offer: None

Uptime: 99.9999%

Website builder: Yes, Weebly

Money-back guarantee: Three days

Price per month: From $5.24

Pros:

  • Unlimited solid-state storage
  • Comes with unlimited email accounts
  • Includes Weebly website builder
  • 24/7 customer support

Cons:

  • Intro offer not as cheap as competitors
  • Short 72-hour money-back guarantee

Overview

Hostwinds is a hosting provider founded in 2010 and based in Seattle, Washington. The company stands out for offering premium shared hosting packages at affordable prices.

While Hostwinds isn’t the cheapest hosting provider around, every shared hosting plan includes unlimited solid-state storage space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts at your domain, and a free SSL certificate. Hostwinds also provides cPanel and the Softaculous one-click installer to make it easier to manage the back-end of your website. The Weebly included website builder enables new site creators to design a professional website quickly

For sites with more traffic, Hostwinds also offers Windows and Linux VPS hosting and dedicated servers with up to 96GB of RAM. VPS hosting can be managed or unmanaged, and the company’s dedicated servers offer highly customizable configurations.

Best Suited For

Hostwinds caters to a wide variety of users with its various hosting options. The company’s shared hosting is best suited for growing websites that can take advantage of unlimited storage and bandwidth. It’s also good for individuals with multiple websites, as Hostwinds’ highest-tier shared hosting plan enables you to host an unlimited number of domains.

For large ecommerce websites and traffic-heavy blogs, Hostwinds’ VPS and dedicated server hosting plans offer more options for scaling up.

Importantly, Hostwinds enables users to build a website using the drag-and-drop Weebly site builder or using content management systems like WordPress and Joomla! These can be installed easily with the Softaculous one-click installer.

Hosting Types

Hostwinds offers two types of shared hosting: regular shared hosting and business shared hosting. The main difference between these is that business hosting plans use more powerful servers and have fewer users sharing the available resources. Both offer unlimited storage and bandwidth regardless of your plan tier.

Hostwinds also offers VPS hosting, generally considered a higher-end service than shared hosting. You can choose managed or unmanaged Windows or Linux hosting. Plans are available with up to 16 CPUs, 96GB RAM, and 750GB of solid-state storage space.

Dedicated server hosting, usually considered the highest-tier, enterprise-level hosting solution, is available in 12 different server configurations. All of these can be customized to ensure you have the RAM, storage, and bandwidth your site needs.

With Hostwinds’ dedicated server hosting, you can order multiple hard drives and specify a RAID configuration to automatically back up your data. You can also choose your operating system and add up to 128 unique IP addresses to your site.

Hosting Features

All shared hosting plans from Hostwinds include unlimited solid-state storage space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email address at your domain, unlimited databases, and unlimited subdomains. The only limitation is that the number of domains you can host is tied to your plan tier.

Shared hosting also includes cPanel and the Softaculous one-click installer for managing your site’s back end. You can install WordPress, Joomla!, or another content management system with a single click, or use the included Weebly drag-and-drop website builder to create your site. Hostwinds includes unlimited FTP accounts to enable you to upload content to your site.

All sites also include a free SSL certificate and a free dedicated IP address for each domain.

Plans & Pricing

Hostwinds offers three basic shared hosting plans and three business shared hosting plans. The main difference between basic and business plans is that business plans offer faster servers with fewer users sharing resources. Plan tiers differ in the number of domains you can host.

Like many hosting providers, Hostwinds offers promotional pricing for your initial plan term for shared hosting. Promotional prices are not as low as those of some competitors, but the price jump upon renewal isn’t as steep, either.

Introductory Price

Regular Price

Shared Hosting: Basic

$5.24/mo

$6.99/mo

Shared Hosting: Advanced

$6.74/mo

$8.99/mo

Shared Hosting: Ultimate

$8.24/mo

$10.99/mo

Business Hosting: Basic

$8.99/mo

$11.99/mo

Business Hosting: Advanced

$10.49/mo

$13.99/mo

Business Hosting: Ultimate

$12.74/mo

$16.99/mo

For higher-tier VPS hosting, you can select one of various plans with specs ranging from one to 16 CPUs, one to 96GB of RAM, 30 to 750GB of storage, and one to 9TB of bandwidth. Pricing is also slightly different for Windows and Linux and managed/unmanaged hosting.

VPS Hosting Type

Cost per Month

Linux Unmanaged

$4.99-$328.99

Linux Managed

$8.24-$395.24

Windows Unmanaged

$10.99-$376.99

Windows Managed

$12.74-$431.24

As the highest-tier option, Dedicated server hosting from Hostwinds starts at $122/month. This price will differ for various server configurations.

Free Offerings

Shared hosting plans include a free SSL certificate and a free dedicated IP address for each of your domains.

Uptime and Performance

Hostwinds has several features aimed at improving performance. All shared hosting plans have access to the Cloudflare content delivery network, which can improve your site’s loading speed. Business hosting users also receive upgraded servers that are optimized for faster loading.

Hostwinds promises 99.9999% uptime, which means that sites will experience less than 32 seconds of downtime per year. In addition, websites are backed up nightly to ensure your data remains safe.

Technology

Hostwinds doesn’t specify what types of servers it uses for its basic shared hosting plans, but business users get access to Litespeed servers that are optimized for speed. According to Hostwinds, these servers provide 500% faster site loading and can accommodate higher traffic loads.

For VPS and dedicated hosting, users can choose between Windows, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, and Ubuntu operating systems.

Ease of Use

Hostwinds is very easy to use because the platform includes access to cPanel and the Softaculous one-click installer with all hosting plans. cPanel is one of the most widely used hosting management software tools and it will be familiar to anyone who has hosted a website before. Plus, with Softaculous, you can install WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, and other web applications with a single click from within cPanel.

Hostwinds’ inclusion of Weebly is also a plus for ease of use. New site owners can build a site in minutes using Weebly’s customizable templates and drag-and-drop site builder.

Support Services

Hostwinds offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. We got in touch by live chat and received a response in less than two minutes. In addition, Hostwinds has hundreds of detailed online tutorials designed to walk users through how to set up a site or configure their hosting environment.

In Conclusion

Hostwinds offers premium shared hosting plans at affordable prices. All shared hosting plans include unlimited solid-state storage space and bandwidth, plus unlimited email addresses at your domain and a free dedicated IP address. In addition, Hostwinds makes it easy to get a new website off the ground since all shared hosting plans include cPanel, Softaculous, and Weebly.

For users who need more hosting resources, Hostwinds also offers a range of VPS and dedicated hosting options.

Overall, Hostwinds provides a lot of features at prices that most competitors can’t match. While this isn’t the cheapest hosting service around, Hostwinds provides excellent value for fast-growing websites.

For more detail on how to use Hostwinds’ services, check out their product on their site.

By Michael Graw
Michael Graw is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Bellingham, Washington. His interests span a wide range from business technology to finance to creative media, with a focus on new technology and emerging trends. Michael's work has been published in TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Business Insider, Fast Company, Salon, and Harvard Business Review.