Name: Netfirms
Plans: Shared, and VPS.
Website: www.netfirms.com
Summary: Netfirms a host that hosts millions of websites; however I don’t recommend them to webmasters. Their prices are a tad bit higher than other hosting companies. These Netfirms hosting reviews show what others are saying what it’s like to host with them.
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Netfirms is a web hosting company that was founded in 1998. They are owned by EIG which owns a lot of hosting companies like JustHost, Dot5Hosting, HostNine, Hostgator, and BlueHost. They have more than 1.2 million websites that are hosted on their servers all around the world.
They are a company that has 5 core values that they operate by; treat others the way you want to be treated, do more with less, delight our customers, pursue growth and learning, and think big.
In my Netfirms hosting review, I am going to show you all the features they offer, uptime, performance, and the quality of their customer support. Then at the end of this review, I will then either recommend them or point you to another web hosting company.
Netfirms Features
Shared Plans
Shared plans are plans for users looking to host multiple websites on one server; the downside to this particular style of hosting is that each site must share resources with each other. Netfirms offers three types of plans under this category: Advantage Plan ($8.99/mo), Plus Plan ($9.49/mo), and the Business Plan ($12.99/mo). Pricing for each plan scales downwards when a user pays for prolonged periods, usually, drops a dollar below normal rate for each year the user extends their purchase. In terms of added bonuses for the plans, each plan comes equipped with a number of free domains, unlimited disk space, and unlimited monthly transfers. Yes, they do use the whole unlimited hosting offer which a lot of companies use.
The largest difference in plans that Netfirms offers is that the Advantage and Business plan allow for the unlimited amount of websites, but the tradeoff is that the rate at which they charge their users is monthly. Each plan scales with the type of user that should be using them. For instance, the Plus plan is meant for an individual trying to create websites while the Advantage plan is more suited for small businesses, and then the Business plan fits a business with a lot more room to grow.
VPS Plans
Netfirms’ VPS plans scale depending on how much RAM the server has. This delineates three plans, the 512MB ($33/mo), 1024MB ($66/mo), and 2048MB ($100/mo). A VPS is a virtual private server which is a server that runs a specific operating system. The OS is up to the users derogative, and in addition, it allows the user to control all customization in the allotted space on that VPS. Netfirms has a wide selection of Linux-based systems which includes up to 2 dedicated IPs. As the plans scale up so does the disk space and bandwidth respectively listed: 20GB + 1000GB, 40GB + 1500GB, and 60GB + 2000GB. Each VPS also comes preinstalled with PHP, Perl, and Python, and with extra Web Analytics to allow users to track their site usage.
eCommerce
eCommerce is a type of web hosting service that makes it easy for their users to set up features such as shopping carts, checkouts, and the ability to generate revenue by selling the users’ products to their customers. Netfirms offer e-commerce with Shopsite. This service costs users $12.99/mo based on a 2-year plan. This comes included with unlimited disk space, 5 free domain names, Google Adwords, unlimited email accounts, unlimited monthly bandwidth, and unlimited website hosting.
This package includes about everything a small business owner could possibly want. In terms of the e-commerce side, Netfirms which partnered with ShopRite supports a multitude of global currencies, customer retention tools, and a myriad of customizable options. This package also comes with the most features of any of Netfirms offers, all the while handling the installation with ease in order to not confuse its users or overwhelm them with all of the features.
Netfirms Uptime & Performance
Uptime
As webmasters we want our websites to be up 100% of the time. Really, as close to 100% as we can get. For the most part, it doesn’t look like you will have a lot of downtime with Netfirms. I have researched their uptime for 15-20 minutes and didn’t see a trend where webmasters were constantly complaining about uptime. They do have a 99% uptime policy which they do seem to abide by. I don’t really have any issues with Netfirms in terms of uptime.
Performance
One thing that I really believe that could be improved with Netfirms is to offer their clients SSD hosting. This is really the way the web hosting industry has been going for several years. So, since they don’t use SSD hosting I would rate their performance as just average. There are a lot of other hosting companies like GreenGeeks and MDDHosting that do use SSD hosting.
Netfirms Customer Service
Netfirms does offer a lot of customer support options to their clients. They have an extensive knowledgebase and user guides which their clients can browse through. They have lots of information about building websites, domains, email, eCommerce services, marketing, online security, scripting, site add-ons, website builders, content management systems, and WordPress.
Communication is always a big deal when doing any business online. I don’t know how many times I have had to contact a host for either my websites or my client’s websites. You need to be able to rely on customer service to get your issues resolved in a timely manner. Netfirms does have 24/7, live chat, telephone support, and you can contact them through a ticketing system.
However, from the research I have done it doesn’t look like Netfirms gets a lot of favorable feedback from their clients. With a lot of EIG owned companies, this has been problematic. From what I have read it looks like customer support has been downsized. Meaning they either outsourced it overseas or when you do have a problem Netfirms has to start a support ticket to get your issue resolved.
However, when I was doing research on Netfirms I did use their live chat to ask them a couple of questions about their web hosting service. It took 8 minutes to be connected to an agent.
I did finally connect with Netfirms and their agent Yashwin H. did answer a couple of my questions. However, as our chat message shows down below he/she didn’t even know what SSD hosting was. I asked if they used SSD hosting and they told me they had a VPS. Then put me on hold for 5 minutes and told me they don’t offer SSD.
Netfirms Hosting Review Summary
All and all, Netfirms really doesn’t stand out to me as a hosting company that you should do business with. Their prices are on the higher end. Then, the price goes up even more. They are under the EIG umbrella, don’t use SSD hosting, and customer service seems to get a lot of negative feedback from webmasters. It doesn’t look like you will have a ton of downtime with them, but there are much better options out there.
I can’t recommend Netfirms at this time to my readers. However, if you’re looking for a hosting company that does use SSD hosting, has excellent prices, and fantastic customer support I would read my InMotion hosting review. They have a great reputation with webmasters and I have done business with them for years.
Please if you have used Netfirms would you please leave a comment up above in the user reviews section. This will help anyone that is considering hosting with them.