Hostwinds a popular web hosting company that is affordable and customer-centric. It supports both Windows and Linux users. Moreover, Hostwinds offers a variety of plans including Shared Cloud, VPS and Dedicated Hosting. And, if you are a WordPress user then you can also find options customized for you.
Hostwinds was established a decade ago and they have offices in Tulsa, Washington, Oklahoma and Seattle. Their target audience includes individuals along with organizations looking for reliable hosting services at affordable prices.
Now, you must be thinking whether you should consider using Hostwinds? Well, you don’t need to worry. Here, I will be providing a detailed review of the Hostwinds to make your work easier.
Table of Contents
Guarantees are on top of everything
- They develop and provide their products or services by placing themselves in customer’s shoes and go the extra mile to ensure an excellent service is catered.
- They offer a 99.9999% uptime guarantee for your website to run seamlessly. Reliability is their topmost priority.
- Excellence is maintained at the highest quality to deliver the best experience.
Hostwinds have received various awards and accolades, for their seamless performance over the past 10 years.
Products to offer
- Shared hosting
- Business hosting
- Reseller hosting
- Managed Linux VPS
- Unmanaged Linux VPS
- Managed Windows VPS
- Unmanaged Windows VPS
- Cloud hosting
- Dedicated servers
1. Shared and Business hosting:
The only difference between the two is the business plan is 500% faster in terms of speed and is capable in generating higher traffic for your website. Business hosting is made with enterprise-level. There are fewer sites per server and resources are abundant.
The shared and business plan comes in three different packages:
- Basic: You get 1 domain with unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The starting price is $8.99 per month.
- Advanced: You get 4 domains with unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The starting price is $10.99 per month.
- Ultimate: Unlimited domain with unlimited bandwidth and disk space. The starting price is $12.99 per month.
Who doesn’t love discounts? Well, we all would love to get one when we become regular customers. Hostwinds provides you a special discount if you subscribe them for several months or maybe years.
Features available for shared web hosting plans:
- Quick setup
- Unlimited email accounts
- Softaculous auto install
- Complimentary Website transfer
- Unlimited databases
- Solid-state drives
- Free dedicated IP
- Free SSL certificate
- Weebly site builder
- Latest cPanel
Additional features for business hosting:
- Lite speed web server
- Optimized MySQL
- Unlimited FTP accounts
Services catered with additional features like:
- Daily cloud backups at night
- The support ticket is generated in case of a problem on your website is detected which is an add-on.
- Prompt assistance anytime, anywhere from skilled technicians.
2. Fully managed Linux VPS hosting:
It is available in different plans such as:
- CPU
- RAM
- Storage
- Bandwidth
Features included in the plan are:
- 1 Gbps ports
- Solid-State drives
- Custom ISOs
- Snapshots
- Website transfer for free
- Friendliness guarantee
- Enterprise firewall
- 99.9999% guarantee
- Multiple locations
They offer a variety of Linux customization options to choose from, including the best of Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and Ubuntu.
You can even pre-build your server with WHM, cPanel, WordPress, and more.
The major difference between a fully managed VPS and unmanaged Linux is that in fully managed Linux, assistance and support are provided during any issue by creating a support ticket. In unmanaged Linux, only they ensure to start your VPS and it’s base functional with the power, networking and connection between it and the Hostwinds. No additional support is provided by Hostwinds.
Unmanaged hosting plans work well with both Linux and windows. Moreover, there are numerous plans available.
For example, the lowest plan starts at $4.99 per month which includes 1GB RAM, 30GB disk space, 1TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited email access. The highest plan is $328.99 per month for 16 CPU cores, 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, 9TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited access to email.
3. Fully managed Windows VPS-
Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Windows Server 2012, or Microsoft Windows Server 2016 are available that are optimized with Hostwinds Windows VPSs.
Furthermore, windows server is also available with Remote Desktop (RDP) and virtual network computing (VNC) to manage and configure the server. This provides you complete access to the server. To manage your server smoothly, you can install web hosting management control panels like Plesk or SolidCP.
You can get a Microsoft SQL Server web edition license by ordering it from the Hostwinds client area on the server ready to use.
If your data is important and you need it in the future, you can even have a backup ready with Hostwinds which will cost you only $1 a month + $0.03 per GB. It will be useful to get this backup to restore your account successfully when lost.
Features included in fully managed windows VPS:
- 100% network uptime guarantee
- 100% power uptime guarantee
- Automatic task setup
- On-going server maintenance
- Virus scanning
- Updating the operating system
- DNS configuration & setup
- Crontab setup
- Setting secure SSH ports
- Operating System reinstall
- Password setup
- Troubleshooting
- Server boot and much more.
Services to cater:
- Enterprise redundant network
- Fastest hosting
- Uptime guaranteed
- Windshield
- Windspeed
- Website transfer for free
- Application hosting
4. Cloud hosting:
First, let’s understand what is a cloud server?
A cloud server is a virtualised private server (VPS) that comes with dedicated resources such as CPU cores, RAM, Disk space, and network port speeds.
Cloud server hosting is ready for use in multiple plans. The lowest tier costs $4.99 per month, while the highest tier costs $328.99 per month which makes you available 16 CPU, 96GB RAM, storage of 750GB and 9TB Bandwidth.
After you select the plan, the next step is creating your cloud server. After that choose from a variety of operating systems, handpick an already built application or templates to launch your cloud server. There is also an option which geographic location you want your cloud server to work best for you.
Let’s get a glimpse of additional features of the cloud server:
- You can select the billing cycle as per your budget and needs. It is available on an hourly or triennially basis.
- The speed of your server becomes manifold with SSD Drives. It also helps to improve your website performance and reduction in the loading of the site.
- To get rid of repetitive task configure the server according to your environment and apply it in the future with just a click of a button.
- Cloud server resources can be increased anytime when wanted.
5. Dedicated Servers:
A dedicated server is a server only available to you. Its resources are not shared with other servers. It gives full control over machines available storage, computing power, RAM and network connection.
A dedicated server will help in:
- Machine Learning
- Website or application hosting
- Storage and backups
- Hosting of game
- Infrastructure virtualization
- Big data and many more.
Enterprise redundant network:
To guarantee the highest uptime and better reliability at every level, different layers of redundancy is prepared. This stop from various failures of the server which hamper our business. Every server is connected with two access switches, and every switch are linked to multiple core routers. It has separate power feeds.
Fastest hosting:
For a seamless experience, uninterrupted speed and hosting is a top priority.
It is tailored to the user’s need and expectations by using:
- SSD Drives
- Latest version of PHP
- Litespeed web server
- Cloudflare’s CDN
- Optimised network route
Uptime guarantee:
Hostwinds team take care to maintain their 99.99% uptime guarantee. Special measures to ensure uptime guarantee are:
- All foremost data are stored safely by using a redundant array of independent enterprise disk.
- For smooth functioning of the machine on continuous basis, a redundant cooling system is employed.
- Site performance is enhanced by redundant networking. It is more reliable with Hostwinds.
- For your website to stay online always multiple power source is necessary which is provided by Hostwinds.
6. Windshield:
It shields your server from harmful attack with one-time service. Windshield services include:
- Firewall: Firewall setup will prevent unauthorized break-ins or hack into your important information.
- Audit: A careful examination or security checking is carried out to ensure your sensitive information is safe with you.
- Hardening of server: It reduces systems vulnerability and break-out with the advanced procedure to maximize security.
Wind speed:
A team of experts conduct thorough performance analysis and apply various optimizations to configure it.
Hostwinds provide a one-time windspeed service to check whether the server is working at 100% capacity.
Website transfer:
Website transfer is complimentary from Hostwinds. All you need to do is sit back and relax while Hostwinds will take care to transfer all your database and upload files. Extensive care is taken when transferring the data to your new server.
You need to follow a three-step process to complete this:
- Submit a ticket with all the important information to be transmitted to the new server.
- A migration plan is designed by experts and migration is initiated.
- QA team reviews the migrated content along with your permission to succeed on this.
Web application server templates:
You can set up a custom cloud server pre-installed with your preferred web application. Let’s check out our application library:
- WordPress: You can create a customized website hassle-free with WordPress. Not a coder? No problem. WordPress does not require coding.
- Minecraft: They provide Minecraft templates pre-installed to choose from and get started.
- CPVLab: Hostwinds CPVLab cloud server makes your marketing campaigns easy. It helps you to track and analyse all the fields of marketing.
- Prosper202: Track your clicks and conversions for your marketing campaigns with prosper202.
- Vbulletin: To integrate more with the community use Vbulletin. It assists to create profiles, polls and more within forum discussion
- E-commerce: You will find all the tools required to build and maintain an e-commerce site here.
Concluding Thoughts
If you are looking for hosting sites Hostwinds will help you build attractive and functional websites. It has robust tools for both small and large corporations.
In short, Hostwinds is known for its powerful VPS plans that have left behind many other hosting rivals. It is one of the most preferred hosting sites as it satisfies customer needs and expectations, more reliable and guaranteed uptime, and cost-effective hosting plans that are appealing to different segments of customers.
If you want to see your business grow, do check out the plans provided by Hostwinds and try out yourself whether it works great for you or not.