DataPacket
DataPacket is a web hosting company in Florida that is recommended for the advanced users. It is another one of those low-cost providers that will cater to personal web hosting and small businesses. This is one of the cheapest web hosting providers I have seen over the years (much like MochaHost and ServerPronto. They claim on their website that they have hosted over 50,000 websites. After doing some research I found out what webmasters were saying about their experience with them.
Whenever I review a web hosting service; I like to look at a number of different things. For instance, what features do they offer, how reliable are they? What is customer service like, and lastly what is their price tag like compared to others? In this DataPacket review I am going to show you why I don’t recommend them.
DataPacket Features
Datapacket offers a number of web hosting services for your websites needs. This could mean anything from a shared, vps, and reseller hosting plan. They offer both Linux and Windows hosting and their prices are very cheap. Please continue reading for more information about the features that Datapacket offers.
Shared Plans
They state that their shared plans are $2.95 on the homepage, but once you click on the plans you get the real price.
WinH-UNL
The first one is called “WinH-UNL”. This is a package that is really just a shared server that uses the Windows OS, as you might have guessed. It’s a very affordable hosting plan that is $4.95/month or $49.50/year. There is no setup fee and they have everything you would want for a Windows hosting plan.
LinH-UNL
The second option for shared hosting is their “LinH-UNL”. This package obviously comes with the Linux OS installed. The price tag for this plan is $3.95/month or $39.50/year. Just like their Windows plan it comes with free setups, and PHP support.
Reseller Plans
They state that their reseller plans are $4.95 on the homepage, but once you click on the plans you get the real price.
Datapacket offers 4 different reseller plans. There are 2 for Windows and 2 for Linux. The details are as follows:
Windows Reseller
Win-R1
The first plan is Win-R1 which is $9.95/month or $99.50/year. With this plan you can use 25 GB of storage and 250 GB of bandwidth per month. This price is by far one of the cheapest reseller plans I have ever seen. It comes with customizable control panel which can be branded with your reseller settings. There are also no setup fees.
Win-UNL
The second plan is Win-UNL which is $14.95/month or $149.50/year. With this plan you get unlimited storage and an unlimited amount of bandwidth per month. Still, this plan is cheaper than most entry level reseller plans. Just like the Win-R1 it comes fully customizable with your own control panel and you can easily customize it to meet your brands needs. Also, there are no setup fees.
Linux Reseller
Linux-R1
The first Linux plan is Linux-R1 which is $6.95/month or $69.50. Like their first Windows plan you get 25 GB of space and 250 GB of bandwidth per month. This price tag is as cheap as a lot of shared hosting plans. You can easily customize it with your own control panel and brand it however you see fit. Setup’s are 100% free.
Linux-RUNL
The second Linux reseller plan is Linux-RUNL which is $9.95 or $99.50/year. As you might have guessed it comes with an unlimited amount of storage and bandwidth. Like all their other reseller plans you can easily customize it to your liking and brand it however you see fit. Again, there are no setup fees.
VPS Plans
For VPS plans you only have two different options and both of these are on the Linux OS. They come with free setups, full SSH Root Access, and 24×7 monitoring.
VPS-A
This plan is $19.95/month or $199.50/year. It comes with 50 GB of storage, 500 GB of data transfer, 2 cores – Intel Xeon @ 3.30GHz and 1 GB of RAM.
VPS-B
This plan is $49.95/month or $499.50/year. It comes with 100 GB of disk space, 3000 GB of data transfer, 4 cores – Intel Xeon @ 3.30 GHz, and 2 GB of RAM.
Clearly, you can see that Datapacket is a cheap hosting provider that has insanely cheap plans. But, the bad news is they have so many issues and webmasters are moaning about their experience with them.
DataPacket Performance
DataPacket delivers so-so for the first few months of service. However, the longer you stay with them, the bigger your problem will be. As far as uptime is concerned with DataPacket webmasters are widely reporting that they have some concerns. For no reason at all webmasters that host with Datapacket could have their account suspended for absolutely no reason at all. Yes, this means one day you could wake up and receive an email in your inbox that says your web hosting account has been suspended. Usually, if your web hosting gets suspended it’s because you have done something illegal or are using to many resources. Case and point, you could be asked to upgrade your service to a plan that will allow more resources. This means your account would be inactive and you no longer have access to all your files, unless you have backed up your files on a remote server. Here are some comments left on webhostingtalk.com
DataPacket Customer Service
DataPacket is honest about their lack of customer support for the clients. But this is not an excuse for a bad service.
They do have a knowledge-base but it only consist of 20 or so articles. They really need to consider adding to this. One thing that really bugs me about Datapacket is there is no online chat feature. For instance, if you have an issue with your server or service you have to fill out a ticket to get your issues resolved. They do have a support area called a “Knowledgebase”. But, after looking at it for a bit I noticed that all the help is like 100 word mini articles. It was actually quite funny to read. The knowledgebase is one article about which is better Linux or Windows? As quoted from their website’s knoowledgebase “Linux when combined with cPanel is a very mature and proven hosting platform”. All I can say is wow!
After clicking on the contact page from the homepage you’re just redirected to “portal home” page that doesn’t have any email or phone number. So I guess it’s safe to say that you’re just going to be relying on someone to answer your support ticket. But, how responsive is their ticket system? Here are some screenshots about their customer support:
DataPacket Summary
DataPacket is one company you should avoid like the plague. Yes, at first glance their prices are quite impressive, but once you get started with them, you’ll wish you hadn’t. There is absolutely no way to call them on the phone or email them. You’re solely relying on someone to answer a support ticket. There is a knowledgebase, but it includes one article about which is better Windows or Linux. This company is lacking in many areas and you shouldn’t do business with them. They are notorious with their reputation of being reliable on the start but being constantly unreliable as the months pass. I would like to hear from DataPacket to let us know what you’re doing to better your service. If you have used Datapacket would you please leave a comment; good or bad about your experience.
If you’re looking for two highly dependable web hosting companies go with GreenGeeks or Inmotion. They are not amateurish like Datapacket is! Please, if you found this review helpful please share it on any social media that you actively participate on. Thanks for reading my review.
I started this section for Datapacket in October of 2015. What I aim to do with this section is show you all the research I have done on Datapacket. Each web hosting company that I review I spend several hours researching them. Once I find information about them I summarize it and put in my positive, neutral, or negative section.
I will be updating this section as often as I can. Please take a couple of minutes to view the content I have found on Datapacket.
This section for Datapacket was started so I can conduct 1 on 1 email interviews with webmasters that have used Datapacket in the past. I conduct these interviews through email and then publish them on tbwhs.com for everyone to read.
If you have experience working with Datapacket I am looking for you. Please contact me through my contact page or you can always send me a tweet on Twitter @tbwhs.