I have been using Host Monster now for a couple months. I have one account with two domains and pretty soon it will have three. Host Monster says they host over 660,000 and that number has been on their website for months now, so I am going to assume they host much more than that at this point.
Anyway, My experience with Host Monster has been relatively good and I have no plans to change to another web hoster. However I do have some concerns, such as the CPU Throttling. If you have a website that uses alot of plugins or scripts than you are at risk to being throttled. Why? Throttling happens when the server calls for the plugins, and sometimes those plugins aren’t server or cpu optimized. The plugins therefore, end up using alot of the servers cpu so they can load on the website; so in turn your website is throttled from a few seconds to a few minutes or maybe even hours. And by throttling, I also mean that your website will be down. They do this to prevent other websites on the server from crashing or causing a complete server crash; they also do it to prevent suspension and deletion of accounts. While this maybe helpful to the company and other clients it is not helpful to the website that is actually causing the problems.
Host Monster does not also tell you of ways to fix the throttling. If you want to find out for yourself you have to contact support. Now, this is one thing I’m going to praise about on the website! Support on Host Monster is very fast, usually taking seconds to a couple minutes to respond to your question. They give straight answers and are willing to answer more and give advice or help you fix your problem.
Host Monster has a variety of packages; I bought the first package, which offers unlimited bandwidth, domains and webspace as well as Linux operating system. It also includes Simple Scripts and Fantastico. That is also a huge plus since Fantastico does contain out of date software and Simple Scripts keeps theirs up-to-date as well as adding new software. Host Monster also uses Cpanel for all accounts, which is very easy to learn!
I also want to mention about their free site builder - It’s not the best and I wouldn’t recommend it. The templates are very generic, out-dated and honestly you could do better by installing Wordpress and finding a great theme.
There is just so much that Host Monster offers, but here’s a few to name:
- Free domain with paid hosting
- Instant setup
- 99.9% network uptime Guarantee
- Unlimited e-mail accounts
- Free domain privacy on first free domain ($4.95 a year thereafter)
- $50 google credits
- Search Engine submission
One thing I do want to point out is that in the list of features, they do not include the cpu throttling, which in my opinion should be on the front page of features; That way, people that are planning on building a cpu intensive website, might look elsewhere for a private server.
Over-all, Host Monster has potential, but I believe they do need to upgrade their servers and get a website builder. But, As the saying goes, "You get what you pay for", which holds true to web hosting providers.
