SingleHop Review – The Good & Bad About Hosting With Them

SingleHop has been a web hosting provider since 2006. Operating from Chicago, USA, SingleHop is considered one of the fastest growing web hosting providers in the US. SingleHop operates on a service on demand infrastructure giving clients the ability to get access to services as needed. This is a feature that has made SingleHop a notch higher from most of its competitors.

SingleHop has more than 5,000 servers providing web hosting services to clients in over 100 countries worldwide. However, what are webmasters stating about their experience with SingleHop?

Whenever, I review a web hosting company I like to look at their features, uptime, performance, customer support, and last but not least their price tag.  I have developed a rating system at the top and bottom of this review.  At the end of the review, I will then either recommend them or suggest another company.

SingleHop Features

Let me just start by saying you better know what you’re looking for if you use this company.  A lot of newbie webmasters might find it a little confusing.  I’m not a newbie, but I still found it complicating to find exactly what I wanted.  If you’re seeking shared SingleHop does not offer these services.  However, for shared, I recommend you check out my InMotion, WebHostingHub, or GreenGeeks review.  SingleHop offers a ton of different plans for those that are seeking VPS or dedicated plans web hosting.  Also, they do offer reseller hosting, which I found out by talking to an agent on live chat.  They do have some plans that you can customize to your liking, as well.  In fact, it can be a little overwhelming when you first go to their website.  When I first arrived at their site, I had to jump on live chat to ask some questions about their plans, because they are a little hard to find.  Their infrastructure is built entirely with cloud hosting for VPS and dedicated servers.

VPS Plans

SingleHop has nine different VPS plans to choose from.  The prices and details are down below:

Dedicated Plans

SingleHop has 16 different dedicated plans to choose from.  The prices and details are down below:

Reseller Plans

For reseller plans, I was a little unsure that they offered reseller plans.  But, I did go ahead and jump on live chat and one of their agents Martina cleared this up for me.  You can only purchase reseller with their dedicated plan which is $159/month.  Meaning that if you wanted to do it on one of their cheaper VPS plans, you can’t.  It means that for a reseller account you’re going to be paying $1908 per year which is $159/month.  It is an extremely expensive for a reseller plan.  For instance, with SiteGround, InMotion, and GreenGeeks you could do this for $15-20 per month.

Custom Plans

Custom plans are one of the biggest perks of using SingleHop.  The ability to choose different hardware and software is appealing to a lot of webmasters.  I’m going to provide you with how much everything is when you customize a server down below:

VPS Based Servers

VPS servers can be customized some different ways with SingleHop.  Meaning if you want more CPU cores, RAM, storage, a different OS, etc. you should be able to do it with SingleHop.  Since it’s tough to give you prices for each custom package I am going to start with the VPS for $45.39/month and let you know how much the extra options are for that plan.  The details are down below:

CPU Cores

You can choose between 1-16 CPU cores.  If you want one core, it’s the same price, but each additional core is about $25 more.  It means that if you want 16 cores, you can expect to pay about $440/month more.

Memory/RAM

The plan I chose comes with 25 GB of RAM.  RAM is as listed down below:

• 50 GB – $14.50/month.
• 75 GB – $21.75/month.
• 100 GB – $29.00/month.
• 125 GB – $36.25/month.
• 150 GB – $43.50/month.

Bandwidth

The plan I chose comes with 1,000 GB of bandwidth.  The prices for more bandwidth are down below:

• 2,000 GB – $10/month.
• 3,000 GB – $20/month.
• 4,000 GB – $30/month.
• 5,000 GB – $40/month.
• 6,000 GB – $50/month.
• 7,000 GB – $60/month.
• 8,000 GB – $70/month.
• 9,000 GB – $80/month.
• 10,000 GB – $90/month.
• 11,000 GB – $100/month.
• 12,000 GB – $110/month.
• 13,000 GB – $120/month.

Operating System

The plan I chose comes with Centos 5 base.  However, you are not limited to that.  Here are the details:

• Centos 6 Base – no extra fee.
• Centos 6 cPanel – $10.
• Debian Wheezy 7.1 – no extra fee.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 – $20.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 – $20.
• Ubuntu 12.04 Base – no extra fee.
• Ubuntu 12.04 LAMP – no extra fee.
• Ubuntu 12.04 Plesk – no extra fee.
• Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise – $30.00.
• Windows 2008 R2 Standard – $20.00.
• Windows 2012 Standard – $20.00.

Managed Services

• R1Soft Backup – $1.50/GB.
• Server Side Virus Scanning – $5.
• Event Notification – $10.
• Kernel & OS Updates – $25.
• Quick Reaction – $30.
• General Managed Services – $69.

I should note that you have the option to pay either monthly or for hourly billing.  Also, you get to pick where you want your datacenter to be located; Phoenix, Chicago, or Amsterdam.

Dedicated Based Servers

SingleHop offers a ton of different servers for dedicated servers.  In fact, this is the reason a lot of people are drawn to SingleHop.  SingleHop offer so many dedicated plans.  You can either get single processors, dual-core, quad-core, or hexacore.  For this example, and to show you the price breakdown of their dedicated custom plans I chose the Intel Core I5-760 which is $159/month.

Hard drives

• 1 TB SATA (7200 RPM) – $35.
• 2 TB SATA (7200 RPM) – $50.
• 3 TB SATA (7200 RPM) – $75.
• 4 TB SATA (7200 RPM) – $95.
• 120 GB SSD (6 GB/s) – $40.
• 160 GB SSD (6 GB/s) – $60.
• 240 GB SSD (6 GB/s) – $80.
• 480 GB SSD (6 GB/s) – $170.

Also, you do have the option to have a second hard drive.  The prices are the same, but you’re going to have to multiply the price by 2.

Disk Controller

• RAID-1 for SATA – $35.
• RAID-5 for SATA – $55.
• RAID-0 for SATA – $35.
• RAID-5 for SATA with BBU – $95.
• RAID-10- for SATA – $55.
• RAID-10 for SATA with BBU – $95.

Bandwith

The plan I chose comes with 10 TB.  However, you can add more:

• 11 TB – $12.50.
• 12 TB – $25.00.
• 13 TB – $37.50.
• 14 TB – $50.00.
• 15 TB – $62.50.
• 20 TB – $125.00.
• 25 TB – $187.50.
• 30 TB – $250.00.

Uplink/Port Speed

The plan I chose comes with a 100 Mbps Port.  But, you can use a 1 Gbps Uplink port for $20.

Also just like their VPS plans you get to pick where you want your datacenter to be located; Phoenix, Chicago, or Amsterdam.

Extra Services

System Administration.  SingleHop does offer system administration support.  It means that you can have anything from troubleshooting, upgrading, and installation services worked on for an hourly rate.  Their hourly rate for both Windows and Linux updates is $150/hour (billed in 30-minute increments).  Optionally, you can have managed services for $69.95/month.  It will include 2 hours of system administration time.

Monitoring.  SingleHop does offer monitoring services too.  These are good for database-driven systems.  To ensure that your server is not being exploited you can pay for QuickReaction ($30/month), Automated Event Notification ($10/month), and you need to call for a price for Custom Content Monitoring and Custom Nagios Setup.

Extra Security.  With SingleHop you can purchase a service called SiteLock which does help prevent hackers from hacking into your server. Whenever hackers hack into your website, they commonly install malicious scripts which can reek havoc to your server. Their service does cost an extra monthly expense, though. If your site is ever hacked, SiteLock will get rid of the malicious code and restore your site to its previous state.

Network Services.  SingleHop does use 200 Gbps networks.  You can purchase 5 additional IPs for $3/month, 13 IPs for $7.50/month, 29 IPs for $15/month, and 6 IPs for $30/per month.  Upgraded Connection to 1 GigE Switch Port are $59/month, and you have to call for a price on the second one.  Bandwidth upgrade is also offered.   The prices are down below:

Also,  you can upgrade connection to 1 GigE switch port for $59/month and you need to call for a price for a secondary port connection.

Devices.  If you a firewall, load balancer, or switches you can also purchase them with SingleHop.  For a Dedicated Hardware Firewall (Cisco ASA 5505 Firewall) it cost $129/month.  The Dedicated Hardware Firewall (Cisco ASA 5510 Firewall) is $450/month.  Load balancer are offered, and the prices are down below:

• Kemp LM 2200 Load Master – $340/month.
• Kemp LM 2500 Load Master- $1,020/month.
• Kemp LM 3500 Load Master- $1,530/month.
• Kemp LM 5500 Load Master- $3,060/month.

For a Dedicated 1 Gbps Enterprise Class Switch you do need to call for a price.

Security.  SingleHop does offer some security solutions.  You can purchase spam filtering for $39.95/year (per domain name), Inbound email anti-virus $5/month, dedicated MailFoundry devices you have to call for the price.  SSL’s are offered GlobalSign Alpha SSL, GlobalSign Domain SSL, GlobalSign Alpha SSL Wild Card, and GlobalSign Domain SSL Wild Cards are free for 1 to 5 years.  However, you can purchase GlobalSign Extended Validation for a year for $299 or if you want GeoTrust Extended Validation for two years for $399.

You can get SSL VPN access for free, but if you want additional ones it $5/month.  Intrusion section and DDoS migration you have to contact sales to get the prices on them.

Control Panel

Depending on what plan and operating system you choose you can install cPanel ($19/month) or Plesk ($10/month).  So you can expect to add $228/year to your bill or $120/year depending on what control panel you decide to choose.  While I am happy that you do have the option to choose from both of these control panels, the price does seem to be very high.  For instance, on one of my VPS servers at InMotion, I’m paying $50/year for cPanel.  Meaning that if you go with SingleHop, you can expect to pay more than 4X as much per year just for cPanel.

Now that we know the features and plans that SingleHop offers lets take a look at performance, uptime, and then I will be able to evaluate their customer support.  At the end of this review I then write a summary; I will then either recommend or suggest another company to do business with.

SingleHop Performance & Uptime

Uptime

If you are a like a lot of webmasters, you cringe when your website is down.  Downtime is one of the biggest problems a lot of webmasters have to deal with, unfortunately.  I have personally had big problems with both GoDaddy & Hostgator.  I can say with 100% confidence that you shouldn’t have any extended downtime with SingleHop.  SingleHop does have a uptime guarantee.  In fact, their guarantee states you can expect 99.9% uptime.  A lot of other web hosting companies will promise these same claims, but SingleHop does abide by these words.

From the research, I have done Webhostingstuff.com has monitored SingleHop and found that their website was up for 99.97% of the time.  It was for 2,726 days.  Very impressive and here is a screenshot I pulled from their website:

Performance

I like to check every web hosting company I’m reviewings performance.  As a webmaster, you need to make sure that your servers run efficiently and at optimal speed.  To do this, I like to go to isitdownrightnow.com.  It is great for monitoring a website’s uptime.  However, what I am looking for regarding performance is their response time.  Typically, I consider a server with fast response time to be under 20 ms.  A range between 21-50 ms is considered average.  While a response time of over 51 ms is considered slower.

To my surprise, I checked SingleHop’s servers and their response time was 139.12 ms.  This is one of the slower ones I have seen in years.  But, to make matters worse, I noticed that it was unstable when monitoring it for three days.  Meaning at times their response time 118.47 ms, couldn’t connect or was as high as 172.45 ms.  The moral of the story is you can do so much better with another host.  Their response time is nothing to get excited about.

SingleHop Customer Service

SingleHop offers round the clock telephone and ticket system customer and technical support. Fast customer service used to be the SingleHop’s main selling point aside of course from the superb features. SingleHop has devised a system where an Account Executive is assigned per account to handle all concerns. Regardless of how small or big your business is you have your own Account Executive at SingleHop to care for all your needs.

Having your own Account Executive is a means to provide good customer support. For the most part, I don’t have any problems with SingleHops customer support.  They do offer live chat, email support, and toll-free numbers you can call 24/7.

SingleHop Review Summary

SingleHop isn’t a horrible company.  They do have a lot of loyal clients.  However, from the test I have run on their site I have found that they do have slower than average performance.  They do not support shared hosting, and reseller hosting is going to be very expensive if you use them.  But, I would like to hear from SingleHop customers.  If you could let us know about your experience with SingleHop, it would benefit everyone reading this SingleHop review.  Also, if you found this review helpful would you mind sharing it on any social media sites you actively use.

I do recommend Inmotion or GreenGeeks over SingleHop though.  I have been doing business with both of those companies for years now.  Thanks for reading.

SingleHop research.

Interviews with SingleHop customers.