Optimal Hosting Review - Cloud Hosting Really Worth It?

Name: OptimalHosting
Plans: Managed WordPress, and Cloud.
Website: www.optimalhosting.com
Summary: Optimal Hosting isn’t a company I recommend you use. They use cloud hosting, but there are much better options out there. My Optimal Hosting review allows other webmasters to leave their reviews down below.

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Optimal Hosting was started in 2012. They are pretty new to the web hosting industry and haven’t been around as long as Network Solutions or SiteGround. However, there is a good chance that if you’re seeking web hosting in the United Kingdom or United States you have probably heard of them before. They started off as a small company that only employed 8 people. However, they have gain some momentum and now employ over 20 full time employees. They now host about 40,000 domain names and offer a number of different hosting plans to anyone seeking web hosting.

Whenever, I review a web hosting company I like to look at their features, price tag, uptime, performance, customer support, and then either recommend them or not recommend them. In this full Optimal Hosting review you will learn all about what they offer.

Optimal Hosting Features

Optimal Hosting does offer a number of different plans to their clients. They are all built on the cloud. It’s nice to see a company that is offering cloud hosting on WordPress specific plans. A lot of companies are starting to move in this direction in the web hosting industry. They do offer cloud servers too. Now, lets take a look at the plans Optimal Hosting offers.

WordPress Plans

Optimal Hosting does offer a plan that is specifically geared for WordPress users. WordPress has been a trusted name in the industry for some time now. A lot of web designers and webmasters prefer to use the WordPress CMS to develop websites. Just like Media Temple they have a plan that suits Wordpress users. Optimal Hosting offers 3 different WordPress plans to choose from. They now offer Lite, Professional, and Business grade plans. Here are the specifications and prices for the three WordPress plans that they offer:

Optimal Hosting Cloud Plans

I should point out that they don’t use the whole “unlimited bandwidth offer” that a lot of other web hosting companies use. Instead, with their Lite plan you get 100GB of bandwidth, Professional gives you 200GB of bandwidth, and Business gives you 500GB of bandwidth.

Cloud Hosting Plans

Next, Optimal Hosting does offer cloud hosting plans. The plans include a daily site backup, 1 click installer (for over 300 applications), cPanel, and they do monitor their cloud networks security constantly. These cloud hosting plans are only backed by a 7 day money-back guarantee though (this is below the industry standard). Optimal Hosting does offer 3 different plans for cloud hosting; Cloud VS1, Cloud VS2, and Cloud VS3. Here is a screenshot of the plans and specifications:

Optimal Hosting Cloud Plans

Domain Names

I should mention that you can purchase domain names with Optimal Hosting. With all of their hosting plans you do get a free domain name. A lot of web hosting companies do give you a free domain when signing up with their hosting service. I am happy to tell you that with Optimal Hosting you will get that too. Here are the prices for the different extensions:

Optimal Hosting Domain Names

Please note: it does cost $9.99 to transfer domain names to Optimal Hosting. A lot of other companies are free to transfer domain names to them.

Marketing Services

Optimal Hosting does offer a number of different marketing services. They currently offer SEO, pay per click, social media, performance, and display ads. However, there is no prices on their website for these services. Instead you need to fill out a forum and Optimal Hosting will get in touch with you.

Optimal Hosting Uptime & Performance

Uptime

Optimal Hosting does have a 100% uptime policy. It states that your website will be up 100% of the time. Meaning that you simply won’t have any downtime at all. This is one thing I hate to see, because whenever I see stuff like this I think of MochaHost which has the same 100% uptime policy. It’s a red flag for me and even the cream of the crop like InMotion has some downtime.

I haven’t tested Optimal Hosting uptime, but from what I have read it doesn’t seem like webmasters are ranting and raving about their uptime. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite. So if you do host with them you could have uptime problems.

However, it does say right on their SLA page that if you website is down for more than an hour you will get credit for an entire month of web hosting for free. Also, ever 10 minutes your site is down you get 10% credit. So these are some bold numbers that should entice webmasters to expect a lot from Optimal Hosting.

Performance

Optimal Hosting does use the cloud infrastructure so performance shouldn’t be an issue with them. From the research I have done it doesn’t look like their clients are complaining about slow loading websites or anything like that. In fact, they seem to be pretty happy with the performance with Optimal Hosting.

Optimal Hosting Customer Support

Optimal Hosting does have 24/7 customer support. There is a toll free number that you can call them at. If ever you have any problems or issues with your web hosting service you just call them up. Sadly, there is no live chat feature. I looked for one on their site and couldn’t find one. It would be nice to chat with an agent on live chat when you have problems rather than picking up the phone and talking to an agent. They do have email support which you could always email them at.

Optimal Hosting Summary

All and all, I really don’t feel Optimal Hosting is a company I would like to recommend to my readers. They are just to new to the web hosting industry and there are a lot of unknowns with them. For instance, uptime is supposed to be 100% but it doesn’t look like webmasters are happy with their uptime. There is no live chat feature, and I actually sent them an email to ask them some questions, but didn’t get any answer.

I could be wrong, but they just don’t seem to be worth your hard earned money or time. If anyone has experience working with Optimal Hosting could you please leave some feedback about your experience with them up above. Thanks for taking the time to read my full Optimal Hosting review.

However, if you’re looking for a company that has been in business for over 10 years; please read my InMotion review. I have personally done business with this company for over 7 years now and love them. They have excellent uptime, support, and their servers are insanely fast!

I started this special section for Optimal Hosting in August of 2015. In this section you will learn first hand what research I have done on them. I look for articles that talk about Optimal Hosting and include them in my review to show what content is available on the internet about them.

I then categorize the content in one of three different categories. The three categories are positive, neutral, and negative. Then I write a short summary of the content I have found so that you can view it all in one place. Please take a couple minutes to review my research down below:

“Positive”

BloggingTips.com

BloggingTips.com is a website that was acquired by Zac Johnson who has been blogging since 2007. He has been making money online for 15+ years and owns a number of successful blogs. The focal point of this site is to provide tips and tricks about blogging. However, Zac did write up an article on BloggintTips.com which talked about Optimal Hosting. The following content was talked about in his review:

Optimal Hosting is a young company and you can expect that their customer support team will be ecstatic and energetic. They do have a pretty good knowledgebase. They do maintain their video library, and have lots of good how-tos.
They do come with a number features. They come with 1 click installers, POP3 and IMAP (email support), eCommerce integration, and it’s all setup in a Linux based cPanel.
Optimal Hosting does offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, Zach has never monitored their uptime with any 3rd party applications.
They do cost a little more than other web hosting companies. But, they offer 6 months of free hosting if you sign up with a 3 year plan.

Overall, Optimal Hosting is a company that is worth a try. They are very new to the industry so there isn’t a lot that can be said about them at this date in time. However, their customer support is very helpful, but they do come with a more expensive price tag than other web hosting companies. All and all, I am adding this to my positive section because Optimal Hosting does get praises from BloggingTips.com.

“Negative”

WebHostingSecretRevealed.net

WebHostingSecretRevealed.net is a hosting review site just like tbwhs.com. Jerry Low runs this website. He provides lots of statistics like uptime and the pros and cons to hosting with Optimal Hosting. Below are the highlights which he talks about in his review:

Likes

Optimal Hosting does have a 100% uptime guarantee.
The do support cPanel and are built on the cloud hosting infrastructure.
Optimal Hosting does do automated backups. This means you can take a snapshot of you server every day, week, or month and have a snapshot in which you can fall back on if something goes wrong.
You can scale up or scale down your plan with ease. This is great for handling huge spikes in traffic.

Dislikes

Their servers are actually really unreliable despite their 100% uptime policy. At first his test sites were up 99.9% of the time, but in 2015 they were up 93.05% of the time. In February it was actually 52%.
Live chat does not work. There is no way to get ahold of Optimal Hosting if you need live chat support. Also, he tried to call them on the phone but was never able to get in touch with anyone at Optimal Hosting.

In conclusion, Optimal Hosting gets a 1 out 5 star from WebHostingSecredtRevealed.net. This is the lowest ranking you can get. He can’t depend on them because their uptime is horrible and customer support is lacking. For this reason I am adding this piece of content to my negative section for Optimal Hosting.

RipOffReport.com

RipOffReport.com is a site that has a collection of complaints about different companies. They have been a trusted source since 1998. It’s never a good thing to see your company on this website. Optimal Hosting has been on there 3 times in 2014 though. This is one snippet which was addressed on RipOffReport.com:

They are also none as “Cloud Pro Hosting”. They do have a flashy sales page and the customer signed up with them. The client wanted a website to be developed by Optimal Hosting and they did do it. However, they developed a site that was a 1 page website (which appeared to be a cookie-cutter website). They put ads all over the website and the client was very disappointed with it.

To make matters worse they delivered the product after the refund grace period. So the client couldn’t get any type of refund. It is all stated in their “fine print” though. They client then tried to cancel their account and Optimal Hosting charged them hundreds of dollars. They had to put a bank block on their account to stop getting charged from them.

I should mention that Optimal Hosting didn’t even take the time to leave a rebuttal or anything. This shows that Optimal Hosting doesn’t even take the time to address problems and issues once they have made it this far. They do have two other complaints on RipOffReport.com which they didn’t respond to either. Obviously, this part of my research is filed in my negative section.

“Neutral”

Interviews are a great way to get some real 1 on 1 incite on what it’s like to host with Optimal Hosting. Hence, why I started the interview section. I contact webmasters on and ask them if they wouldn’t mind doing an interview. Then I post the email interviews down below.

If you have experience with Optimal Hosting I am looking to talk with you. Please contact me if you would like to do an interview. If you would rather contact me through Twitter you can do so @tbwhs.

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.

Optimal Hosting Review – I Would Host Elsewhere