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Hostpapa Hosting Review

Updated: April 28, 2020 by tbwhs

Name: Hostpapa
Plans: Shared, Reseller, and VPS.
Website: www.hostpapa.com
Summary: HostPapa isn’t a hosting company I recommend. There are much better options out there. Learn what other webmasters are saying about them in this Hostpapa hosting review.

Hostpapa.com
{{ reviewsOverall }} / 5 Users Score (38 votes)
Overall1.9
Reliability2
Server Speed2
Customer Support1.8
Features2.1
Cost/Value2.2
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ReviewResearchInterviews

Hostpapa LogoHostPapa is a web hosting company that was established in 2005.  A lot of residents that live in Canada are interested in their services.  They are Canadian based and do have a fairly large client base.  There are more than 200,000 sites hosted on their servers. While they have only been in existence for less than a decade they are one of the fastest growing hosting companies.  But, what are other webmasters saying about their experience with them?  They appeal to a lot of small businesses as well as resellers because they offered those type of plans. Another key selling point with Hostpapa is you are going to get “World Class” customer service, and they are eco-friendly so you are helping the environment by choosing their service (like GreenGeeks).

When I review a web hosting company, I like to look at many things.  What features do they offer?  How reliable are they?  Do they have good performance?  And what is their customer service like?  Lastly, I will factor in the cost.  I know it all sounds appealing, but is it too good to be true? Sadly, I do not recommend HostPapa because there are a bunch of big issues that I have with their service. Please get ready to learn exactly why I would recommend that you choose another host.

HostPapa Features

HostPapa isn’t overly complicated. It’s pretty simple because HostPapa only offers two different types of plans. There is absolutely no way you are going to sign up for a dedicated plan because they don’t provide it (see InMotion or SiteGround for that). Instead, you either go with their shared plan ($3.95) per month or one of their five reseller plans. So I will start with what you get with the shared plan.

HostPapa Shared Plans

With HostPapa their shared hosting plan is $3.95/month.  It’s a good price and competes with most web hosting providers regarding price.  Like most hosting providers you are going to receive a free domain (for life), but realistically as long as you stay with them (if you leave it is $26/year).  It’s all in their fine print. Everyone else offers that service too, so it’s not just HostPapa’s special offer.

You are promised “unlimited” bandwidth which just like other host isn’t really practical because there is a limit (from my experience you will be fine with 200 visitors a day with a shared plan). Also, you will get free setups for the configuration of your server, and I do like their control panel because they do use cPanel, and you can use Fantastico to install your scripts. So pretty much you are promised everything to get your site up and to run.

HostPapa Reseller Plans

If you want to purchase their reseller plan and allocate some of your servers with them, you are free to sign up with their reseller plan by clicking “reseller plan” from the homepage, where you will see a slider with five different options. The first is “bronze” ($19.95/month), “silver” ($27.95/month), gold ($39.95/month), “platinum” ($59.95/month), and lastly “Titanium” (S79.95/month).  Their prices are quite nice.  All of their reseller plans come with three dedicated IP address, which a lot of other web hosting companies only offer 2.  A lot of other web hosting companies will limit the number of cPanel accounts, but with HostPapa it’s unlimited.  It is not a bad idea for webmasters since they can easily host their client’s sites on their servers.

goMobi

goMobi With Hostpapa

HostPapa also offers a unique service for those webmasters that are interested in having a mobile friendly site.  It’s been said that 81% of people now search reviews, compare prices, and find local shops from their smartphone.  For only 2.99/month you can use this unique service by HostPapa and integrate your website, so it’s mobile friendly.  There are a plethora of templates, design options, and it’s easy to setup.  Heck, you can even try it for 30 days for free.

Control Panel

HostPapa does use cPanel which is a huge plus. It’s really my preferred control panel to use. A lot of other hosting companies like Fatcow will use vDeck or their own in-house control panel. Setting up WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any other scripts that you might want to use is a breeze. For the most part, it does seem to work great with HostPapa. I really don’t have any issues using it.

30 Day Money-Back

They do have a money-back guarantee which I will discuss a little later in this HostPapa review. True, it’s not a horribly bad money back guarantee like ServerPronto or Virpus, but it is a little misleading. A lot of other companies like InMotion will give you your money back for 90 days. This is not the case with HostPapa, though.

Not so fast, people are reporting lots of issues with their service. I have actually worked on a number of sites that used HostPapa and they were nothing but trouble for me.

HostPapa Uptime and Reliability

Uptime

HostPapa has been lacking for years, now. In a perfect world, everything would run perfectly all the time and we would never have any issues. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world and HostPapa has made a couple of my client’s life miserable and a lot of fellow webmasters life’s less enjoyable. Simply put, your site/sites are either running perfect (for a short time) or your site is down throughout the day. In some cases,  people have even reported their sites being down for a couple days.  I wouldn’t say their uptime is as bad as MochaHost though.

But, I am not stating that everyone that uses their service is going to have issues with uptime.  Some people have reported that they have hosted with them for 4-5 years with minimal downtime.  I guess if you’re reading this and you have noticed no downtime you’re a lucky one.  Possibly some of the shared or reseller servers have bad apples on them?

Hostpapa & Uptime
This comment was left by Michael Pacitto – ngtimes.ca.

Twitter Blow Up

So while doing my research and monitoring their Twitter I have found that the past and current clients of HostPapa are not exactly ranting and raving about their service.   In fact, here are couple screenshots are taken from Twitter:

Hostpapa Twitter

HostPapa Another Tweet

Bad Tweet About HostPapa

Performance

You”ll have performance issues with HostPapa.

Along with your sites being down there, servers do not seem to be as fast as InMotion or WebHostingHub. My guess would be that HostPapa tries to cram way too many people on their servers just like GoDaddy. Moreover, I have talked to a number of clients that used to host with them and they merely stated that HostPapa was very good in the beginning. Once they started acquiring more and more customers their service went all downhill from there.

They bit off more than they could chew and spent a massive amount of money on Adwords while attempting to rope in more and more clients. Rather than taking care of all their customers they simply went with the business model of bringing in more customers and neglecting their current ones. Pretty much like a dirty car salesman; they will tell you everything you want to hear, but once you drive away you find out the car has been in a flood and everything isn’t quite as authentic as it appeared.  Here is a comment left by their performance:

HostPapa's Performance
This is a comment by coppermoon.ca.

Now, to show you why I call their performance spotty.  I went to isitdownrightnow.com.  What I wanted to do was check their response times on their servers.  To my surprise, it was from 3 milliseconds to 70+.  Response times under 20 are great and over 50 are too high.  At times they are great, but other times not so much.  This is why I call their performance spotty.  I have talked to a lot of webmasters on Twitter and they also reported that sites either loaded quickly or very slowly.  There was no rhyme or reason to it.  See screenshot down below:

Hostpapa Response Time

HostPapa Customer Service

HostPapa has lacking customer support.

HostPapa’s customer service needs to be improved. If you have been following my reviews on tbwhs.com you already know by now that customer service is very important to me. As mentioned above you will have issues, more than likely and you will need to get in touch with customer service. You could simply go with the notion that their customer service is helpful and will get you squared away. However, if you went with that you would be misleading and your time and money would be wasted.

I actually logged on to their live chat because there were multiple issues with my client’s website. There was a conflict in the .htaccess file and the server was in an endless loop that would never redirect correctly. So I logged onto the live chat and the damn thing wouldn’t ever connect. Once it did and then I was immediately kicked out?  This doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s very frustrating. Furthermore, from talking to other webmasters they are also reporting similar problems or little to no assistance on the other end.  I had to end up paying someone to fix the problem.

I haven’t tested out their phone support or email support but I have heard that it can take quite awhile to get responses.  People on Twitter have told me this over and over again. Once you do get a response it really isn’t all that helpful and you will have to repeatedly go through the process and wait a couple of days (if they respond) in which nothing ever really gets done.  I wouldn’t say their support is as bad as 1and1, but it isn’t something I would be bragging about.

Better Business Bureau Complaints

HostPapa BBB Complaints

Now, I always like the check with BBB.org to see if they have any known issues.  From my research, I have found that they have a B+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.  However, there are lots of complaints against HostPapa.  They have 34 complaints and most of them (29) are “Problems with Product / Service.”

Questionable TOS Policy

You’re not going to get all your money back with their 30-day money back guarantee. It’s all stated in their TOS on their website. I had to dig a little deeper and read it clearly to find this. It’s in their TOS (8.10). Basically, there are a number of things that they do not cover which a lot of webmasters are finding out the hard way. Domain names are the highest I have seen which are $25 and this is subtracted from your refund. Please be sure to read my “more articles” tab under “negative” to see further details on how this works.

HostPapa Hosting Review Summary

HostPapa used to be so good, but somewhere along the lines, they took in more customers than they can handle.  The cost is appealing, but once you get started you’re in for a long winding road. There “personal” help isn’t really what it seems. While they do offer cheap hosting packages, the feedback from a lot of webmasters seems to be very negative. I would like to hear from HostPapa on what they are doing to keep their paying customers happy. If a member of Hostpapa would please leave a message that would be much appreciated.

  No, I’m not saying they are horrible by any means, but I will not use them.  I have had problems in the past.  I can’t recommend HostPapa at this time.   At one time they were fantastic and didn’t have many issues. There seems to be some issues with customer support.  I have questions about their technical expertise.  Some users say they are very helpful, while others say they are not very useful.  So, if HostPapa could improve upon their customer support and some moderate downtime issues.  I would be more than happy to reevaluate them if they would address the problems stated in this review.

I would encourage anyone that uses HostPapa and could offer some detailed information about your experience with them good or bad, please do so up above in the user reviews section. If you found this HostPapa review helpful in any way please push the share buttons down below. Thank you so much for reading this and I hope it was of some assistance to you. Lastly, if you are looking for a good web hosting provider that has excellent customer support go with InMotion or WebHostingHub because they will treat you right without all the hassles.

 

Research on Hostpapa.

“Positive”

WebHostingHero.com

Stephane is a web developer that has over 15 years of experience working in the IT field. He is also a system administrator. Stephane does run a hosting review site at WebHostingHero.com.  He has collected some feedback on HostPapa, and most of the people are very happy with the service.

The reviews of HostPapa web hosting are almost all praises. Their customer’s state they have a bevy of easy to use options that any webmaster can access, whether you are new to the web hosting arena or not. Outside of being extremely affordable, the other benefits listed in review after review are, the high uptime, excellent customer service, easy to use control panel, great stock of templates, and the flexibility to create your own website, renewal of service is a snap and the amount of multiple features available.

To expand on the customer service comments, customers report it is fast, friendly and takes care of whatever the issue is. Additionally, quite a few of the reviewers took the time to state how long they have been customers with HostPapa and some have been with them for years.

Lots of Pros

There was a fascinating was mentioned twice that demonstrates that HostPapa is environmentally conscientious. They have been awarded a green energy certificate for using the wind and solar to offset the power they use for their web hosting service. You don’t here other web hosting services talk about being environmental stewards. Since we are finishing up with the pros on a cutting edge note, let’s discuss the cons from the reviews.

Few Cons

One of the reviews listed was an unhappy camper. They stated there were tons of email issues ranging from emails being marked spam that was not, email blasts that landed in the junk file and emails designated as sent but were not. They also stated that when they tried many times to get the issue resolve, they were met with less than helpful and responsive technical support. The only other con listed in the reviews was from a lady who stated she keeps getting updates in French, even though she has requested a change to English.

Overall, it appears HostPapa the pros outweigh the cons and they have received 9 out of 10 stars.


BestHostingSearch.net

BestHostingSearch researches and reviews web hosting services like tbwhs.com provide. They offer an in-depth study of each host they review, with a sidebar that gives information about the company that owns the web service. BestHostSearch.net posts any current coupons available at this time and then posts an “uptime chart” that covers the last 30 days. You can choose to read their editorial review or customer reviews, and there is a tab for the different hosting plans offered by the service. In this case, we wanted to know what BestHostSearch had to say about HostPapa.

Overall Score

According to the graph on BestHostSearch’s site, HostPapa is up and running 99.87% of the time. The editorial reviewer gave HostPapa an overall score of four out of five stars.

As far as price goes, HostPapa is competitive with its competition. You get a free domain name, as well as some marketing credits for no charge. Your marketing credits are with Facebook, Miva, Bidvertiser, AdWords, and Bing. It gets high scores for value for the money.

The performance also gets a high score of four out of five stars. Their servers are only down for ten minutes a month for maintenance, and the server location is environmentally friendly and cyber security features.

Also receiving excellent marks is the control panel. Customers can manage all of their website needs, with over 50 scripts available.

HP provides several different types of tech support, including live chat, email, a ticket system, and phone. You also can get multiple languages for your support. Hostpapa does get a 4 out of 5 on performance, control panel, and technical support. Overall, they do get 4 out of 5.

They do have about 30 reviews from past HostPapa customers and for the most part, they are pretty happy with them. There were only 7 complaints out of 30 total comments. Therefore, the feedback on Hostpapa seems to be very good on BestHostSearch.net.

“Negative”

HostPapa TOS

HostPapa has a questionable TOS (terms of service) policy for those are a little unsure of whether or not they want to sign up with them. Don’t get me wrong they do have a 30-day money back guarantee. However, once I show you how it works you will see that you don’t really get all your money back.

Let’s say you sign up with their “Business” plan which is $5.95/month. You pay for the plan for 36 months. Your bill is $214.20 for three years of service. That is $70 per year. Not a bad price at all. However, the refund does not cover:

  • Setup fees ($15).
  • SSL certificates ($20).
  • Domain names ($25).
  • And any other third party services.

So basically, let’s say you sign up and use their service for three months. You’re not a happy camper. You request a refund. Already you are out three months of service which is $17.85. If you had a setup fee, there goes another $15. Your domain you don’t get a refund for either, so there goes another $25. Assuming that is it, you are out $17.85+ $15 + $25. You are not getting $57.85 back. Out of your bill that is $214.20 you only get $156.35 back.

It is outrageous to charge $25 for a domain name credit, and it doesn’t cover SSL, setup fees, transfer fees, and third party services. You will only discover this once you cancel your account.

“Neutral”

WebhostingSecretRevealed.net

It is another web hosting review site that is by Jerry Low. He has reviewed some hosting services, and I do agree with a lot of the content he has published on his website. Jerry did do a HostPapa review, and he highlighted some different points. He listed some pros and cons to using HostPapa. The points that his review addressed are below:

Pros

  • Uptime Guarantee.
  • Lots of features for the money.
  • Affordable prices.
  • Use green energy.

Cons

  • Hidden fees.
  • Hostpapa does not offer 24 hr support.
  • No consistency in the way they handle customer issues.
  • No room for website growth.
  • They refund only half your payment when you cancel.
  • Try to charge you extra once you close your account.

As far as the pros and cons are concerned, this doesn’t appear to be a respectable company to try and build your website with. In fact, Jerry recommended a number of another host over HostPapa. While being green is very important in this day and age, it doesn’t necessarily change the fact that they attempt to overcharge their customers as a way of keeping them from leaving. Be sure to check my negative section because I am going to show you how their TOS works. They are rated 3 out 5 stars.


HostJury.com

HostJury.com is a web hosting review site just like tbwhs.com. All of their content on their website is user generated content. Meaning that there is no editorial review, just others that have used HostPapa stop by and leave their comments and rate them. They do have a large amount of comments that were left on their website. There are good and bad things that have been addressed in their HostPapa hosting review:

Positive

  • You can register domain names with HostPapa.com. You do get a free one when you sign up with them.
  • They have many loyal clients that have been using them for more than five years.
  • Customer support does answer their questions and concerns very quickly. The best way to get ahold of them seems to be through their telephone number.

Negative

  • Accounts do get suspended for using too many emails. They do state that you can use unlimited emails, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.
  • Customer support doesn’t respond to you right away. People have noted that it takes 3-5 days to get back with you. Some have stated that customer support is located in India. Has not been confirmed, though.
  • The speed of WordPress websites is very slow.
  • Some users have reported lots of downtimes.
  • The price does go up after your contract ends.

There is a mixed bag of reviews for Hostpapa.com. Some customers are loving them and others are hating them and telling you to go elsewhere. They do get a rating of about 70 on HostJury.com. This isn’t bad. However, the support gets a 59 which is very poor. I am adding this piece to my neutral section for my research.


WhoIsHostingThis.com

WhoIsHostingThis reviews web hosting services, much like tbwhs.com does. They offer a brief summation of the main features of the hosting service, along with a score based on the familiar five-star system. They then provide you with the price of enrollment, along with a link to the host service. From there, you go right into the customer reviews on the host. Here we’ll see what WhoIHT’s says about HostPapa.

Overall Score

WhoIHT gives HostPapa 3.7 stars out of five, a score that they call excellent. Features that ranked high are the lack of limits to traffic and emails, as well as the three-month money-back guarantee. Customers get a free .com with their subscription, too.

Customers Say:

HostPapa offers unlimited bandwidth, which many of their customers praise highly. They say that the reliability of their sites is great, with little to no downtime. Any downtime is for maintenance, and they have plenty of warning.

Many of the customers said they had used other web hosting services, but that HostPapa is their favorite. It is reliable, with tools that are easy to use. It installs easily and has great apps. The website builder is user-friendly.  Some customers complained about customer service, saying that it was based in India. It also would take a half hour to get a response, and often, the answer had nothing to do with the problem.

Overall, besides some complaints about the customer service, the value for price is excellent, and the service is a good one. There is some good and bad feedback on HostPapa on this hosting review site. They sport 3.5 stars out of 5. Meaning that most of the customers are happy with the service they have received with Hostpapa. However, some webmasters downright hate HostPapa. For this reason, I am adding them to my neutral section for my research.

Interviews with Hostpapa customers.

“Annie_Levy”

How long have you been using Hostpapa?

Since August 2012.

What plan do you have with HostPapa?

I did have site hosting and my domain name with them, within the last year I moved my domain name to Godaddy, and I deleted my website and set up a new site on Squarespace, and I redirect my domain name to Squarespace. All I have left with Hostpapa is my email hosting; my email is the name of my website.

What do you feel are the pros and cons of HostPapa?

Pros- none.

Cons, let me see.. everything. If there is a worse company out there, then I thank whatever God exists I don’t have to deal with them because if I had to deal with Hostpapa and another crappy company I would probably kill myself. And it would still be Hostpapa’s fault.

You said you have problems with email?  What are the problems?  How frequent?

From the first day, I moved from FatCow to host papa the problems started. I have two issues which I’ll break down separately.

Issue 1: 

Maybe 70% of the emails I send don’t arrive in the recipient’s inbox. They go straight to the person junk mail, or are labeled **SUSPECTED SPAM** or they just don’t arrive at all. I say 70%, but there is no way to know exactly as chasing up every email with an email saying ‘did you get my email’ can sometimes come across as stalking.

I also don’t receive a lot of emails that I know have been sent to me.  Clearly, this is very hard to track as I don’t know if I haven’t received it.  But I get a lot of “did you get my email?” and since my answer is very often “no” it’s easy to deduce that it didn’t arrive.  This is a very hinder-some way to run a business, it has caused many bad and contentious situations for me that I know of invoices not received and not paid on time for example. The amount of work missed I can’t quantify, but it’s definitely been a problem.

Issue 2:

For years I was with FatCow and never had any spam mail, the day I moved to HostPapa the spam started. It started off slow 30 a day, which rapidly crept up to 50 a day, gradually increased to 100 a day, then 200 a day and now I’m on 300 a day. I also have a LOT (hundreds) of names and keyword rules set up to automatically delete so I’d take a guess that the actual amount without the rules is probably well over 1000 a day.

Can you imagine 1,000 spam emails a day? I actually can imagine because a few months ago I got 5,000 spam emails over one weekend, which is as close to legal torture as you can get. Bear in mind I have to delete each email off my phone and laptop, so the daily 300 is actually 600 a day (10,000 that one weekend). I burnt through an iPhone battery in a year from deleting so many emails, I need to charge my phone every hour. Apple said they’ve never seen so many charge cycles on an iPhone ever. It really is enough to make you crazy.

How is customer support?  Be as detailed as possible.

The worst, awful. Hostpapa least helpful suggestion was “have you thought about getting a new email address?” I’m a self-employed freelancer, and I’ve had the same email for 15 years, so that is not an option, but it seems like it’s going to have to be.

I have begged, threatened, cried, pleaded and reasoned with them to help me so many times, and for someone higher up the chain of command to take a closer look at my case. Every time I get an automatic reply from someone reading off a basic “How To Avoid Spam” checklist, like “don’t give out your email address, enable spam assassin, change your filter levels.” I don’t use that email for anything other than work (I’m not an idiot, I have a separate shopping/newsletter email) and the rest of the checklist are the first things I did when I first started getting the problem, which I explain in every email but I just get the same basic list back. Or if I’m particularly vocal on Twitter sometimes the problem disappears for a few days or a week but then it comes right back again, and the same process starts again.

Hostpapa made some changes but made it worse

A month ago they changed my filter level to the highest level and I never received any emails for 3 days, it blocked out everything. I lost out on 2 weeks work and a bunch of important stuff  that I found out about later, again the things I’m aware of are only the people that have mentioned to me later on in passing “oh did you not get that email I sent”, There is no way for me to know exactly how much I missed those few days (and continually lose). I did finally get a call from someone higher up a while back (Francisco) who promised to look into my problems and would call me the next night. He never did. After the 4th unanswered email asking when he was calling back they replied telling me they could no longer help me with my problem.

I will say that practically all the stress and anxiety I have in my life stems directly from my email issues caused by HostPapa. The long term continued stress and frustration of emails not working, not receiving or knowing if they’ve been sent, coupled with the insane spam problem I deal with ALL day EVERY day sends my stress and anger levels through the roof and affects the rest of my life.

Lastly, would you recommend HostPapa?

Hell no, are you crazy? Or yes if you want to be made crazy.

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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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