Name: AwardSpace
Plans: Free, Shared, VPS, and Reseller.
Website: www.awardspace.com
Summary: AwardSpace is a great free host. They get excellent feedback. Lots of site owners use them. This AwardSpace review will show what others are saying.
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AwardSpace is a hosts that was founded in 2002. They are German based company. Their parent companies are Zetta Hosting Solutions LTD. and AttractSoft GmbH. AwardSpace does have one major advantage over other hosts like GoDaddy, BlueHost, and HostNine. Also, AwardSpace offers an entirely risk-free service. They offer free limited hosting. They have been providing this free hosting since 2005. Has worked to their advantage and propelled them ahead of other hosts in the industry.
Whenever I review hosts, I like to look at their features, uptime, and performance, and customer support. Once I look at these aspects of their service, I will then write a summary. So, let’s get started with this AwardSpace review.
AwardSpace Features
AwardSpace is a feature packed host. You can use a free hosting plan, shared hosting, VPS, and reseller plans. They use SSD and come with a plethora of tools to help you run and maintain websites.
Free Plans
I was very excited to check out their free service. If you have no budget and are learning web design. Free hosting will be very enticing for you. Why? Because it isn’t going to cost you, any money. You can learn without having to invest any money.
AwardSpace offers free hosting accounts that include a web-based control panel. Allowing you to easily setup and manage your website. Among the added features are free installations. 1GB of storage. 5 GB of data transfer. Money back guarantee and a 99.9% network uptime. Lots of great email features As well as including virus and spam protection. Along with s Autoresponder. PHP hosting is available.
You can use one domain with their free plan, too. You can use WordPress and Joomla (using their Zacky Installer). They have very strict limitations on their free service. You can’t use more than 25,000 inodes. You can only send 31 emails and receive 3,000 emails per month. One email account. 50 MB email quota and outgoing connections are disabled for security reasons.
Overall, I think offering free hosting is a very smart idea on AwardSpace’s end. It’s a great option for newbie web designers, small hobby sites, etc.
Shared Plans
Award Space has shared hosting plans that offer lots of advantages. Beyond the low price, which is a great perk, these plans include no need for technical maintenance and are supported by a company that has 14 years of experience. There are three options with the shared plans: Max Pac Plus, Web Pro Plus, and Basic. There is no setup fee for any of these services. Pricing ranges from $1.08 for the Pro Plus to $5.83 for the Max Pac Plus. The “Basic” plan does cost $2.99 month. Their prices are lower than Dot5Hosting and MyHosting.com. Website management becomes easy with these plans as they all include features like, Full DNS management, domain lock control, and EPP key control. Security is also a priority as all of these plans have a long list of include features.
AwardSpace does use the whole unlimited storage and bandwidth sales pitch. I haven’t been a fan of companies doing this over the years. You can’t use more than 20% of the CPU/RAM otherwise AwardSpace will suspend your account. Also, if you exceed 250,000 inodes Awardspace will give you a warning first and then suspend your account after that. You will then be forced to upgrade to a VPS server.
VPS Plans
Award Spaces’s VPS Plans provide an excellent way to partition physical servers into several virtual machines. A significant advantage of these plans is that you get a 100% individual machine with root access along with your dedicated CPU, RAM, and SSD storage. Three groups of these plans exist Starter VPS ($10/month), Pro VPS ($20/month) and Advantage VPS ($40/month). These prices are quite low compared to LiquidWeb.
Dedicated RAM and RAID protection storage double as you move from each plan to the next. Furthermore, there are a large number of additional available upgrades including upgrades like RAM memory, HDD space/device, bandwidth/traffic, and IP addresses.
Reseller Plans
AwardSpace reseller is a little different than other reseller accounts I have seen in the past. When you want to use their reseller plans you must sign up at https://www.resellercluster.com; You can sign up for their reseller program. Then create a store and start reselling our services such as web hosting, domains, etc. and you receive a commission for this.
Here is an example of reseller store:
At first, I thought this was kind of like an affiliate program. But Alex R. on live chat explained it to me. Here is what he said:
For the affiliate program you receive commission for client who bought paid plan through your affiliate link. With the reseller program you can have a store/website which you should promote and your clients can register. With good promotion of your reseller store you can have a lot of clients free or paid.
SSL Certificates
With a lot of web hosting like RoseHosting, A Small Orange, and Hostgator you can purchase SSL certificates with AwardSpace. Better yet they offer six different SSL certificates which are all 256-bit encryption.
- The Rapid SSL is $25.95/year.
- The GeoTrust QuickSSL is $99.99.
- GeoTrust SSL Premium is $125.99/year.
- The GeoTrust True BusinessID is $139.99/year.
- GeoTrust TrueBizID Ev is $230/year.
- GeoTrust TrueBizID Wildcard is $570/year.
Domain Names
Just Like Network Solutions and Doteasy you can purchase domain names with AwardSpace. You get a free domain for life with their Web Pro Plus and All Semi-dedicated plans, and two free domains for life with their Max Pack Plus plan. Domain transfers are completely free with AwardSpace, too. You can purchase .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us domain names for $14.95 a year. They do offer more domains, and they range from $8.48 to $41.95/year. However, I do like to use NameCheap for registering all my domain names. NameCheap is cheaper, and the control panel is very easy to use.
Data Center
AwardSpace does only have one data center, though. I learned this by reading AwardSpace’s about us page. I read about the infrastructure of their network. At first, it stated that they have a datacenter located in Kiel, Germany. But also read they had a network across North America, too. However, I was a little unsure about this. I had to jump on live chat to get an answer to this question. I found out that they didn’t have any data centers located in the United States. Just one in Kiel, Germany.
Money Back
AwardSpace does have a 30-day money back guarantee too. Much longer than ServerPronto (7 days). Virpus (3 days). But not as long as GlowHost (91 days). And DreamHost (97 days). There is some fine print on their site that states. Their refund guarantee is only for annual web hosting plans (1,2,3,4,5 years). Also, domain names are non-refundable.
Now, that we know all of the features that AwardSpace comes with. Lets take a look at how good their performance, uptime, and customer support is.
AwardSpace Uptime & Performance
Uptime
So, how is AwardSpace’s uptime? AdwardSpace has a 99.9% uptime policy. I was reading their TOS page which states that they are not liable if their server hardware breaks. AwardSpace is not responsible for user errors. Not reliable for software problems that are not supported by AwardSpace.com.
A lot of hosts like SingleHop and Hosting24 will have a page on their site that shows you the status of all their servers. AwardSpace sadly does not have a page on their site that shows the status of their servers.
From the research, I have done on AwardSpace at WhoIsHostingThis.com and WebHostingGeeks.com. I have found a couple of complaints complaining about their uptime. There was only a small percentage of reviews that stated problems about their uptime.
Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that uptime is not an issue. They seem to get very positive reviews for their uptime.
Performance
Performance is one aspect of hosts that is very important. People have small attention spans when they are surfing for information online. The longer it takes your website to load the worse off you will be. So, I wanted to jump on live chat again and ask them if they were using SSD hard drives. You can see my chat transcript down below:
I did learn that they use SSD hard drives. Therefore, their performance should be faster than those that use SATA hard drives. This is one key aspect that many companies like MDDHosting, HostRocket, and InterServer have been using for years. It’s good to see that AwardSpace is also using SSD hard drives.
I also did some extra research on AwardSpace and found they have minimal complaints regarding to performance issues. Therefore, I can rate AwardSpace very highly for performance. I can confidently tell you that you will not have problems with slow loading websites.
AwardSpace Customer Support
How good is AwardSpace’s customer support? I got my first taste of it when I asked a couple of questions regarding SSD hard drives. Also a question I had about their data center. AwardSpace does have a live chat which is available 24/7. You can also email them if you have any questions or concerns.
AwardSpace does have telephone support which is just their sales team. Meaning, you can’t ask them any technical questions because they will not be able to answer them. Instead, you will need to start a “trouble ticket.” Their sales team has a number in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany.
I did find that a community forum. Which has been discontinued on October 7th, 2015? Because there was a low demand for it.
AwardSpace does have a FAQ section on their website. Which have lots of answers to any questions you might have?
From the research I have done on them it looks like the feedback with their customer support is mostly positive. Meaning there haven’t been a lot of complaints about customer support that doesn’t handle problems promptly. So, I can firmly stand behind their customer support and say that they are certainly above average. You shouldn’t have any significant problems relating to customer support with AwardSpace.
AwardSpace Review Summary
Overall, AwardSpace sparked my interest because they offer free hosting plans. Their free plans do have lots of limitations. But they are ideal for someone that is completely new to designing websites. Furthermore, their shared, VPS, and reseller plans are priced fairly. Their uptime is great, and their performance is excellent too.
Customer support is certainly above average, but you can’t get any technical problems answered on the phone. One thing that bothers me since I live in the United States. Their servers are located in Germany only. Therefore, I would have to use a CDN. Which would be an extra monthly expense? If I wanted my website to load quickly. However, if you are located in Germany or around there, I wouldn’t see this being a major issue.
So, yes I do recommend them for Germany (or surrounding countries). I would recommend them for United States residents but you are probably going to have to invest in a CDN (content delivery network) if you want your sites to load quickly in the United States.
However, if you need a dedicated server, AwardSpace does not offer dedicated hosting. Instead, I would read my LiquidWeb review or InMotion Hosting review. They are both ideal for dedicated servers and VPS plans. They do also offer shared plans too.
However, the two cheapest reliable shared companies I would refer you to would be WebHostingHub and SiteGround. Both of those hosts have an excellent reputation in the web hosting industry. I have worked with them for eight years.