Hostpapa Hosting Review

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.

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.

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.

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.