SingleHop Review - A Good Solution For Web Hosting?

Name: SingleHop
Plans: VPS & Dedicated.
Website: www.singlehop.com
Summary: SingleHop is an average host. There are better options out there to do business with. I don’t recommend them at this time. This SingleHop review will show why there are better options out there.

ReviewResearchInterviews

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:

SingleHop VPS Plans

More VPS Plans From SingleHop

Dedicated Plans

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

SingleHop Dedicated Plans

SingleHop More Dedicated Plans

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.

Backups. Storage and backup services are also offered at SingleHop. For Idera Agent Software they provide this for you for free. However, if you want Idera Pay-As-You-Go Backup Space, it cost 1.50 per GB stored. You can also purchase Idera Self-Managed Solutions for $50 per license. Server backups for your FTP are also $10/month (for 10 GB of space). Backup storage overage is $1.50 per gigabyte.

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:

SingleHop Bandwidth

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:

SingleHop Uptime

Performance

SingleHop Response Time

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.

Singlehop unstable

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.

“Positive”

WhoIsHostingThis.com

Whoishostingthis.com is another web hosting review site just like tbwhs.com. They have collected some “user reviews” from customers that have used SingleHop in the past. For the most part, the reviews are mostly positive.

SingleHop is a web hosting service that provides public and private cloud services to over 4,000 businesses throughout the country. As the feedback shows on SingleHop, there are many pros and cons about using this service.

Mostly Pros

The majority of users of SingleHop state that there is a very quick and efficient turnaround time. There is no downtime when using this web host which allows for quicker production. Customer support has the highest rating with SingleHop. The professional customer support employees answer questions in a timely fashion. This enables the customers to continue to work on their products. The uptime is also listed as one of the top pros about using SingleHop. 100% uptime means that there is no downtime in the program. Clients do not have to keep trying to upload their content for their business. Another positive aspect of SingleHop is the value. The pricing for the use of SingleHop is relatively inexpensive and is based on a monthly rate. The going rate for the use of this site is less than $160/month.

Few Cons

Along with all the positive aspects of SingleHop, there are also setbacks. The top complaint about SingleHop are spam emails and having their account hacked. Another negative aspect is that if a client does not contact customer service before the due date of the monthly fee, they will automatically charge the clients account. I am not sure if that is a con, though because of every hosting company bills you once a month. It’s kind of how you pay for your service. Also, clients are expected to sign up for extra services that are not originally included in their contract.

In conclusion, they have received 3.7 out of 5 stars from customers that use their service. It looks like that, for the most part, people at whoishostingthis.com are pretty happy with them.

WebHostingChoose.com

Web Hosting Choose is a web hosting review site much like tbwhs.com. One person reviews a web hosting site and offers a summary of all of the features and fees of the host. The owner’s name is Scott Buehler. Then he quotes reviews written by customers of the web hosting site. In this case, we’re going to look at WebHostingChoose and what it has to say about SingleHop.

Features

According to WHC, SingleHop offers server locations in Chicago and Phoenix. There are about 30 dedicated server setups with SingleHop. They appeal to those webmasters that need a VPS or dedicated server.

Cloud Hosting

Singlehop offers public cloud hosting. You can choose the configuration you want, the operating system you want, the bandwidth, RAM, and CPU. You can either choose Windows or Linux. Also, you can install any control panel on your site. You start as low as $50 a month and can go as high as $822 a month if you want lots of options.

SingleHops offers 100% uptime packages so that server maintenance won’t interfere with your business. You can also get enhanced SLA. All of this, of course, is for a price.
Customer service is good, with responses within one hour. If you don’t get a response within that period, you get a 5% credit on your account.

You should expect 30-minute cloud deployment and three-hour server deployment. If not you get a 10% credit. This is the only web hosting site I’ve seen that gives credit if it doesn’t live up to standards.

One thing that is not that great about SingleHop is that they don’t offer a community forum. However, SingleHop does recommend that you use social media for this. They do actively participate on social media.

You can get managed or unmanaged accounts with SingleHop. Some clients complained that their sites crashed. Those same customers said they got a refund, though. There has been good and bad feedback from webmasters. It looks like all complaints were handled with a refund. While the company may be new (started in 2006) there is good and bad things about them. However, the bad things have been addressed by SingleHop. For that reason, I am adding this to my positive section.

“Negative”

“Neutral”

WebHostingGeeks.com

WebHostingGeeks.com is another popular web hosting review site. They have collected some comments from real users about SingleHop. For the most part, there is a lot of mixed feedback on their service. Here are some highlights on what people are saying about them:

The majority of the people who have used SingleHop as their web host have had a wonderful experience. The majority of the reviewers gave SingleHop web hosting a minimum of four stars in each category. The categories are the price tag, software, user-friendliness, reliability & uptime, and technical support. Two of the reviewers even stating that SingleHop was the best web hosting company they have ever worked with. One reviewer, who gave SingleHop a perfect five-star score in every category praised the company for having no downtime at all. He also goes on to congratulate the company on excellent customer service and professionalism. Although he had a problem with the transition, he gives Single Hop credit for doing their best to correct the problem and make amends for the problem ever having occurred. Another reviewer who also gave SingleHop a great review stated that they were a small hosting company and that SingleHop had been an enormous help.

Like all corporations and people, SingleHop simply can’t please everyone. There are at least two extremely unsatisfied customers out there. The first unsatisfied customer, who gave a dismal one-star rating across the board complains of an eleven hour and fifty-three minutes downtime and a charge of $504 to get his information back.

As you can see, they get mixed responses. They are rated 3 out of 5 stars. This isn’t horrible, but nothing special either. The reviews on them are all praises or nothing but trouble. Hence, why I put this article in my neutral section.

HostAdvice.com

Host Advice does review of web hosting services, much in the same way that tbwhs.com does. It gives you an overall scoring of the hosting service based on five stars. A reviewer reads all customer reviews and compiles these with his or her experiences with the hosting company, giving a thorough overview and summary of the quality of the services. There are no user reviews though which I would like to see added to Host Advice. In this case, we’re looking at HostAdvice analysis of SingleHop.

Overall Scores

SingleHop’s scores are all over the place. They rank lowest in the support category, with only two and a third stars out of a possible five. But, it gets four and three quarter stars for being user-friendly. So, I guess that at least if it’s easy to use, you won’t have to call support as often.

It also gets four and a half stars for reliability. That’s pretty good, meaning that the server is functioning at least 95% of the time. In this case, SingleHop is up 99.98% of the time. I don’t know why that doesn’t qualify for five stars, but oh, well.
Pricing of SingleHop gets two and a half stars. This means that it’s a little too expensive for the services and features you get.

SingleHop Reviews

Reviews of SingleHop are very positive when it comes to the custom control panel and security options. There are several different features that affect the amount of storage and disk space you can have. You can add up to 16GB of RAM, and increase bandwidth to 13TB.

However, there are no backups, and there is a lot of fine print that you had a better study. For instance, there are hourly rates when you exceed monthly, support can take 30-40 minutes to get in contact with them, you have to pay for “better” support, and when you cancel your account, there is fine print about refunds.

All in all, SingleHop does get 7.6 out of 10. This isn’t bad, but pricing and support get lower ratings. This article doesn’t state that SingleHop is bad, but they don’t get the most positive ratings.

Interviews with SingleHop customers.

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.

SingleHop Review – The Good & Bad About Hosting With Them