Pricing and Features

3Essentials, in keeping with its name, makes sure to cover all the bases when it comes to meeting users’ dedicated hosting demands. With its focused selection of three main dedicated hosting plans, the company skips the usual fluff without skimping on hardware, bundled features, or customer support.

For starters, all of 3Essentials’ offered plans come with a minimum of 8 cores, with the CPUs jumping in total processing power as you go higher up the tier. Baselines for RAM and storage space are similarly impressive, with 3Essentials offering a minimum of 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of disk space. In addition, you have a choice between using standard SATA or solid-state drives, all of which use RAID-1 or RAID-10 configuration. This means your data is stored in mirrored or nested drives, giving you a better cushion against the possible effects of devastating disk failures, and giving you better data security and protection overall.

3Essentials’ lowest price tier is pegged at $360 per month, where you get octa-core Intel Xeon processors running at 2.0 GHz, plus the standard 1 TB of storage and 16 GB of RAM. Going up to a rung, you get the $489 per month plan. Here you get 64-bit Intel Xeon processors running at 2.6 GHz, and the same baseline 1 TB of storage and 16 GB of RAM. You retain the same default RAM and storage capacities when you jump up to $545 per month, though you do get 64-bit Intel Xeon processors running at 3.5 GHz, giving you a big boost in terms of processing power.

If it doesn’t sound like there’s much difference between plans, you would be right — at least initially. Most of the nuances emerge when you dig into the configuration options that 3Essentials gives you the moment you pick a processor. With that initial choice done, you are then asked to sort through a menu of storage and RAM options. Regardless of your choice of plan, for example, you can choose to pay additional fees (from $100 to $400) to upgrade your storage to 2 or 4 TB SATA drives, any of an impressive range of 800 GB, 1.6 TB, or 3.2 TB SSD choices, or even a mix of SATA and SSD. Likewise, you can pay $24 to $72 to bump your RAM up to 32 GB, 48 GB, or 64 GB.

A similar “a la carte” approach is used for your server’s initial configurations. 3Essentials carries a range of pre-set templates that include your choice of operating system and optional control panel software like Plesk and cPanel. Vanilla operating systems come free with your hosting plan, and you can choose from Linux CentOS 7.x, Ubuntu 16, or Windows 2012 R2 Standard. If you choose to bundle your OS with control panel software, Plesk costs an additional $15, while cPanel costs $20; MS SQL (2014 or 2019) on Windows servers, meanwhile, costs an additional $25.

All hosting plans also come with a standard 4 TB per month of bandwidth, though you can buy additional bandwidth at $50 per 5 TB if needed. Each plan also comes with automatic nightly backups, but if you’d like to implement a custom backup plan for your server, 3Essentials offers managed backups at a starting rate of $20 per month and $50 per 1 GB.  They also have premade managed backup packages ranging from $15 – $150 and covering data volumes from 25 GB up to 500 GB.

If keeping track of all these — and your server’s daily upkeep to boot — sounds a little daunting, 3Essentials also has managed server plans for your consideration. Essentially these function like server configuration templates: instead of choosing the OS/control panel templates, you can select the premade managed ones instead, and these are billed on top of your base hosting plan fees too. There are 3 managed plans to choose from: CentOS 7.x with either of the control panel software options (Plesk or cPanel), and a Windows and Plesk bundle. Opting for any of these means 3Essentials will handle the burden of actually monitoring or maintaining your server, so you can focus on growing your reach or audience.

Thanks to the company’s solid Service Level Agreement, you can also rely on clear 100% guarantees regarding uptime, server hardware, and datacenter infrastructure. This means you can claim account credits for instances of downtime caused by failure in hardware, network, or infrastructure: 5% of your monthly fee for every hour of hardware-caused downtime, or 5% per 30 minutes of network or infrastructure downtime, with a cap of 50% your monthly fees for all instances. Compared to the typical uptime guarantees in the field, 3Essentials’ SLA is a great deal, and refreshingly straightforward to boot.

Customer Support

3Essentials guarantees 24/7 customer support available via their email-based ticketing system or live chat. Additionally, the company also maintains a comprehensive and thorough knowledge base, with thousands of articles covering various topics.

 

You can also purchase more advanced support at a fee of $20 per 15 minutes. This includes assistance for updating your server’s operating system, troubleshooting your Plesk or cPanel installation, or updating the applications and software you’ve installed on your server.

What's the Verdict on 3Essentials?

Worth It, Some Issues

3Essentials Dedicated Hosting Review – Conclusion

If you’ve got a site that experiences high-volume traffic, carries out complex functions, and/or depends heavily on speedy and reliable performance, then 3Essentials can likely meet your demands without padding their services with unnecessary fluff. The company offers servers outfitted with modern hardware and specifications, and the same cutting-edge approach can be seen when it comes to their software options. Their robust Service Level Agreement assures your peace of mind when it comes to your server’s availability and performance, too. 3Essentials’ comprehensive hosting plans come at a premium, but if you have the cash to spare, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth here.