Homestead Web Hosting Reviews – Why This Host Isn’t Worth Your Money

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Name: Homestead
Plans: Shared.
Website: www.homestead.com
Summary: Homestead isn’t a good option for your web hosting needs. I don’t recommend you do business with them. These Homestead web hosting reviews might aid you in determining if they are right for you.

Homestead.com
1.9 Users Score (11 votes)
Overall1.8
Reliability2
Server Speed1.9
Customer Support1.7
Features1.9
Cost/Value1.9
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HomeStead Logo

Homestead is a company that is geared towards the newbie webmaster.  Before I start I do want to let you know that they are an EIG owned company.  EIG owns over 90 web hosting companies like ApolloHosting, Dot5Hosting, PowWeb, and Hostgator.  Meaning, you don’t need any experience at all to take advantage of their hosting and website builders?  They are quite popular and have software developed by Intuit which has developed an ‘easy to use website builder” that anyone can learn in an instant.  But, what are webmasters saying about their experience working with Homestead?

When I review a web hosting company I like to look at their features, uptime, reliability, performance, customer support and cost.  After I fully digest everything they have to offer I will reach a conclusion on their company.  Please check out the rating system at the top of this page to get a general overview of my thoughts on their company.  So, this is another company I don’t want to recommend for various reasons.  Stay tuned because I will give reasons on why I don’t recommend their service.

Homestead Features

HomeStead offers three different web hosting packages.  They do something a little different than other companies.  Meaning they don’t use the words “shared”, “VPS”, or “dedicated” anywhere on their website.  Thus, they are geared towards the newbie webmaster that doesn’t know much about web hosting; they simply want to buy a domain and use a site builder and get their website up in running quickly.

Starter Plan

There first plan is called the “Starter” plan which is $4.99/month.  It’s a plan that offers 25 MB of storage, 5 GB of bandwidth per month, up to 5 pages, no email account, and web statistics, and a website builder.  Really, not a much is offered with this plan, and WebHostingHub offers so much more and for less.

Business Plan

Homestead offers a “Business” plan which is $19.99/month.  This plan includes 5 GB of storage, 100 GB of bandwidth per month, up to 100 pages, supports 3 sites, 5 email accounts, web statistics, and a website builder.

Business Plus

Homestead offers a “Business” plan which is $19.99/month.  This plan includes 5 GB of storage, 100 GB of bandwidth per month, up to 100 pages, supports 3 sites, 5 email accounts, web statistics, and a website builder.

Website Builder

Homestead SiteBuilder

Obviously, this is Homestead’s focal point.  They want anyone in the world to be able to create a website with minimal knowledge.  It should be very easy and you don’t have to know any coding or have really any technical knowledge.  They use Intuit Website Builder which is actually pretty easy to use. Everything is drag and drop.  Meaning if you want a title in a specific spot you just highlight it and move it to the desired destination.  You can easily add pictures and videos and drag them around to wherever you want them.  Editing pages and inserting contact forms is very easy, too.  They do offer a lot of video tutorials which are very helpful.  Designing websites is really a breeze with this site builder.

Poor Design Homestead

However, I do have one problem with their templates; they are insanely generic.  They don’t look very professional at all and look like they were developed in 1997.  

Here is a video review I found on Homestead which does give you an inside look at that website builder:

Homestead Uptime & Performance

Uptime

With Homestead you can trust that your website is going to be up 99.9% of the time.  There isn’t going to be a whole lot of downtime.  They have a pretty good datacenter that you can trust will always be up.  Obviously, as a webmaster your going to want your website to be up all the time and with Homestead you can trust that it will be up for most of the time.

Performance

In terms of performance Homestead has some very buggy issues.  For instance, you can’t upload medium to high quality images without their web hosting builder crashing.  This is really a huge draw back because you’re limited to using poor quality graphics.  This will make your website look like it was designed in 1997, as I have already mentioned in this review.  Past users are actually reporting that they have gotten 404 errors on their websites from time to time.  Here is a screenshot showing what one customer has said about their experience:

Homestead Performance

Homestead Customer Support

Homestead’s customer support makes me sick. When you tried to cancel the service, you might be surprised to know that there won’t be anyone to attend to your call.  There have been a lot of billing concerns where people signed up for their free trial and cancelled, but still got billed. You won’t even have an answer on how to get in touch with someone. If you’re lucky to get connected to their customer support, you might be disconnected several times.

With their customer support, you will have to waste a lot of time because you have to be on standby before you can even get them to do anything. Their customer support team isn’t friendly and prompt as you would expect them to be. Sometimes you may even feel that their customer support doesn’t know what they’re doing. In general people are not satisfied with their customer support at all.

Homestead Summary

This hosting company isn‘t recommended at all, and in fact you’ll find many negative reviews about them.  Don’t get me wrong I think the idea of what they are trying to do is great, but it simply won’t work for you.  The templates look like they were created in 1997 and your website won’t look modern or even remotely professional. One big pain for them is their customer support; they also have a lot of billing issues. They offer features that appeal to first time webmasters, but they are overpriced and of very poor quality.

But, your in luck if you’re looking for a better alternative. In fact, there are many hosting companies out there such as InMotion, GreenGeeks, and WebHostingHub that are cheaper, and a whole lot better for your websites needs.  If an employ of Homestead is reading this can you please let us know what you’re doing to make your service better?  If you have any experience working with them would you take 5 minutes out of your day to leave your experience with them?  Please feel free to share my Homestead review on any social media sites you actively participate on.  Thanks for reading.

I started this special section for Homestead in September of 2015. There have been a lot of Homestead web hosting reviews in the past and I really believe this adds a lot of creditability to my Homestead review. What I do is research the web for information on Homestead. I then write up a summary of the piece of contend I have found.

Once I have written a summary I then post it up on tbwhs.com for everyone to read. I then file it in 1 of the 3 following categories; positive, negative, and neutral. I try to update my research as often as I can. Please take a couple minutes to read the content I have found on Homestead down below:

“Positive”
“Negative”

WebsiteToolTester.com

WebsiteToolTester reviews web hosting companies, the way tbwhs.com does. WebsiteToolTester offers a brief overview of the hosting service, with some personal opinions of service added in. They also include a video of the website builder in action, which you don’t see everywhere. Following this, you’ll see a thorough scoring of each feature and service, based on a five star scale. Here is what WebsiteToolTester says about Homestead.

Overall Score

With WebsiteToolTester.com, Homestead only gets two out of five stars. This is due to the fact that Homestead seems to be stuck in the ancient history of web-building.

The Good

Homestead offers acceptable templates for website designs. You can also transfer your domain, with adequate advice from the help section.

The Bad

Just about everything else about Homestead is bad, according to WebsiteToolTester.com. The host only offers Western European and English language interface. There is one navigation level, so the host is not appropriate for bigger websites.

In addition, the templates are quite limited, and you can’t change templates without losing all of your content. The editor only offers basic features.
There are also a lot of HTML errors in the SEO. This is enough to drive most businesses to some other host, because who needs to go to all of that work to lose customers?

The Ugly

Basically, most customer reviews, along with WebsiteToolTester.com, say that everything about Homestead is ugly. If you don’t expect much from your website except storage, this might be a good choice. Otherwise, go elsewhere. They do get 2 out of 5 stars from WebsiteToolTester.com and have gotten 38 comments, most of which are negative on their company. A lot of their customers have used them in the past and have currently moved on. I am adding this part of my research to my negative section for the above mentioned reasons.

“Neutral”

Pcmag.com

PC Mag offers many things to its subscribers. One of the services it offers is reviews of web hosting companies, the way tbwhs.com does. But, instead of user reviews they give an editor review. Pcmag.com opens its review with an overall ranking of the hosting service based on a five point scale. This is followed by the pricing information, a list of pros and cons, and the bottom line. Then, the editor (Micheal Muchmore) gives his analysis of the hosting site. Here, we’ll see what PC Mag has to say about Homestead.

Overall Score

PC Mag only gives Homestead two out of five points, which is a rather low score. This a score which is categorized as “fair” on PC Mag. Still, they say that Homestead does have its uses, but they might not be for everyone.

The Good

Homestead has been around a long time. It’s a good company for people who are pretty confident in using such services, providing tools necessary to build a fairly good site. It’s a pretty good place for storage, say for photos, or for a blog that has low traffic.

The Bad

In today’s world, you can’t expect to do much business with a website that doesn’t integrate with handheld mobile devices. And, you can’t do that with Homestead.

The store features with Homestead are also somewhat limited (there are extra fees for all the bells and whistles you’re going to need with an ecommerce site). They really do limit your bandwidth with Homestead too. In addition, while this host provides an easy platform for building your site, the bandwidth is too limited for heavy traffic. Basically, if you want a host that offers basics, and won’t need store features, or ordering, or expect much traffic, then Homestead should be just fine for your needs.

Overall, Homestead does get a “fair” rating which is only 2.5 out of 5. For this reason I am adding this piece of my research to my neutral section for Homestead.

WhoIsHostingThis.com

WhoIsHostingThis is a website that offers thorough reviews of web hosts, like tbwhs.com offers. They provide a listing of the key features of the host, along with a star rating system and the basic fee for an account. This is usually followed by customer reviews that score the host on 4 different features. In this case, we’re looking at WhoIsHostingThis’s review of Homestead hosting services.

Overall Score

Homestead comes in about average in most reviews of service. On a five star scale, where five is the highest score, Homestead gets three stars. Four stars – its highest score, is for uptime. Support and features et three stars, and value for the money is only two and a half stars.

The Good

On the whole, customers seem to really like the support they receive from Homestead. There are a few, however, who find the support insufficient or ignorant. The uptime is also highly praised, again, with some nay-sayers who say the host has too much down time or not quick enough response to outages.

The Bad

While uptime is pretty good, some users complained that this is still an HTML based host. When a website goes down, you may or may not hear from Homestead concerning your site.

The Ugly

Some customers have been billed for services even though their sites have been down for weeks. Others report that their websites have been blocked, with no explanation.
In short, if you want a place for your pictures, blog, or other low-traffic site, Homestead will probably be fine.

In conclusion, there a number of mixed reviews on Homestead at WhoIsHostingThis.com. They sport a 3.1 overall from 12 users. They score the lowest (2) for value. Meaning, that if you sign up with them you don’t get a whole lot of value for the money. Since there are such a mixed bag of reviews left from Homestead I am adding this piece of my research to my neutral section.

Interviews are a great way to find out information on what it’s like to use Homestead. I am a big fan of interviews and I like to talk with webmasters about their experience with Homestead. What I do is conduct an email interview with other webmasters so that everyone can get a better understanding of what it’s like to use Homestead. I then publish the interview for everyone to read.

If you have experience with Homestead I am looking to talk with you. Please send me a email through my contact page or you can always reach out to me on Twitter @tbwhs.com.

All content on tbwhs.com are opinions and not facts. I have thoroughly reviewed each company and then provide my personal opinions on them. It’s up to you as the consumer to do your due diligence and do more research if you feel something might be inaccurate.
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