Since 2005, WebHostingPad has provided web hosting to customers with secure, well-organized services. Their customer service department has earned awards, and they use some of the best equipment available. However, they have fallen on hard times. Webmasters are pretty upset with the way the service has gone downhill over the years.
When I review a web hosting company, I look at the affordability of the services, along with the ease of use. I also look for a site that has a variety of hosting packages for the customer’s convenience, and the features offered. Finally, I evaluate the quality of their customer service department and the amount of uptime available to their clients.
I have developed a rating system at the top of this review that shows you how I rate them on every area. In case you don’t want to read the full review, feel free to quickly glance at the overview. A lot of other web hosting review sites recommend WebHostingPad to their readers. WebHostingPad used to be a good web hosting service, but I will show you why I don’t recommend you do business with them for your website in this full WebHostingpad review.
WebHostingPad Features
Shared Plans
Power Plan
WebHostingPad offers two shared web hosting plans. The first one is the “Power Plan”. This plan is $1.99 per month on a 3 year contract or $4.99 if you elect to pay monthly. You’re not going to be shortchanged with this plan as cPanel is included. You should easily be able to install WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or your ecommerce scripts on your site with ease.
Power Plan Plus
The next one is the Power Plan Plus. This plan is $4.99 a month on a three year contract. Also you can pay monthly for $6.99 a month. I’m a little unsure about what you actually get which isn’t added in the Power Plan, but it’s probably more RAM, disk space, etc.
I should note that these plans are very cheap compared to a lot of similar web hosting providers. However, WebHostingPad does use the whole unlimited bandwidth offer like a lot of hosting do. Think about it; where else can you get a shared plan for $1.99 a month? Now that we know the shared plans they offer lets take a look at the VPS plans they offer.
For shared plans they are right up their in terms of price with HostNine, JustHost, 1and1 and Fatcow.
VPS Plans
The VPS package – actually has 3 levels. The Beginner Level ($19.95/month) provides 20 GB of disk space, with 100 GB of bandwidth and a dedicated IP address. The Professional Level ($39.95/month) provides 80 GB of disk space and unlimited bandwidth, with 2 dedicated IP addresses. The Premium Level has 160 GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and 2 dedicated IP addresses. One of the differences between the Beginner, Professional, and the Premium Level is the amount of guaranteed memory. You get 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB, respectively. Compared to a lot of other web hosting companies you do get a lot of resources for pretty cheap. But is it worth it; please keep reading.
Setup of your site is free, and they provide templates for your site, along with a site builder program. It’s as easy as any other site to use, if you can do it on your own. WebHostingPad is really a budget hosting company with a ton of features.
cPanel
Yes, they do use cPanel which is a huge plus for me and a lot of webmasters. Hostgator, MDDHosting, WireNine, UltraHosting also use cPanel too. You can host unlimited domains, POP, IMAP email, and you get automatic email auto responders and forwarders. You also can use their unlimited parked domains, subdomains, and mySQL. Your monthly fee includes CGI-BIN and SSI. You get cPanel control, customizable error pages, Fantastico script, and spam assassin . The data center is excellent, providing backups every week. Bonus features are WordPress, B2evolution, Image Galleries, Web Blogs, Coppermine, and PHP Nuke. Really, I do like the price and all the great features Webhostingpad offers to there clients.
Don’t get to excited because I am going to show why WebHostingPad is a lacking web hosting company!
WebHostingPad Uptime
Uptime
WebHostingPad promises to deliver 99.9% uptime. However, this is far from the truth. Maybe, I should say; you could potentially have problems with uptime with WebHostingPad. In fact, webmasters are reporting a lot of problems with uptime. There have been countless reports that servers just crash for no reason at all. It doesn’t seem to be just every once in awhile, but more like on a weekly basis. Over the years, I have worked on a number of sites that were hosted on WebHostingPad’s servers and have to say I wasn’t impressed with their uptime. It just seems to be either good or bad with them, with no in between. Here are a couple of screenshots I have gathered about uptime from unhappy WebHostingPad customers:
The bottom line with uptime is they have way to many issues for me or my clients to trust them with my websites.
Performance
Now, comes the time when I will rate their performance. To do this I go to isitdownrightnow.com and check their response times. I have tested their response times and they respond in 56.51 ms (milliseconds). Typically, I like to see a response time under 20 ms. WebHostingPad’s response time falls in the average category in terms of performance. So, yes there is better and there is worse. See screenshot down below:
WebHostingPad Customer Service
Where did their customer service go?
WebHostingPad’s customer service used to be good. I should point out that you can contact them through live chat, telephone, email, and a support ticket I have tested it some in the recent years and while true it used to be very good; it really seems to be going downhill quickly. I really hope WebHostingPad’s staff takes note of this review and leaves me some reassurance that they are making every effort to improve their customer service. They have business ours for their support. This is one key mistake I believe they are making. Customer service is where the dream becomes a nightmare. It doesn’t matter how easy a site is to use if, ultimately, help isn’t there. You’ll need help at some point, and with WebHostingPad, it just isn’t there, anymore. At one time it was, because the company received lots of awards for excellent customer service (possibly just from affiliates). However, as with so many other companies, as the web evolved, and the company got bigger, their customer service suffered.
To many customers have complained that when they do hear back from customer service, the help is very slow and unhelpful. Customers also don’t trust the support they receive, because when the employees tell them their service will be back up in X amount of time, it isn’t. Some customers are happy with their service, but many discover that the service people are not particularly knowledgeable.
Support has business hours…ugghh!
WebHostingPad Summary
With Webhostingpad, you don’t necessarily get what you pay for; cheaper is not ALWAYS better. Their uptime is kind of questionable, but not horribly bad. Response times are average, at best. In addition, their support is amateurish at best. The suspicion is that this company is run by a limited staff, without the backup of a large staff that knows the ins and outs of web hosting. Not a horrible web hosting company by any means, but there are much better ones out there. I just can’t put my good name on WebHostingPad for a recommendation. I wouldn’t recommend anything at tbwhs.com that I wouldn’t use myself.
I would rather go with InMotion because I know that if problems do arise I will be taken care of. InMotion also has faster servers and excellent uptime. Please, if you have anything to add to this Webhostingpad review do so up above. I want to hear from your experiences with there hosting. Furthermore, if you found this review helpful please support tbwhs.com and share my review with your friends and family. As always, thanks for taking the time to read my Webhostingpad review.
In July of 2015 I wanted to start a special section for WebHostingPad which adds value to my review of them. There is a lot of great content floating around the net that shows what other webmasters are saying about them. I like to show you why I have said whatever I have said about WebHostingPad so that you can see first hand the research I have done on their company.
By writing a summary of the content I have found on WebHostinPad gives you the chance to see what the article or piece of content is about. Then I categorize the content into 1 of 3 sections. Positive, negative or neutral. Please see down below the articles which I have read which show my research on WebHostingPad.com:
This section of my review is my interview section. A lot of times I like to reach out to other webmasters that have used them. It doesn’t matter if they are loving them or hating them I want to talk with them about their experience. It gives me a chance to talk with webmasters 1 on 1 (via email interview).
Below you will find email interviews I have done which show what their customers are saying about them. If you have experience with WebHostingPad I really want to talk with you. Please get in contact with me through my contact page you can send a tweet @tbwhs.