Comparakeet » Best Web Hosting Companies » Site5 Review

Ranking

28^th in Best Web Hosting Companies

Rating

7.8/10

Price

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Site5 Review 2020

Item: Site5
Rating: 7.8
Author: Jonathan Kerns

Established in 1999, US-based Site5 has been consistently providing hosting services to thousands of customers ever since. They use high-end servers divided among a small number of customers in the hopes of providing quality web hosting. But is that really the case? Not quite. Their uptime has issues, regular rates are rather expensive, and they don’t even offer a true month-to-month billing term. On the other hand, the benefits of their service, such as page load performance or unmetered features, are good enough that these alone might be able to convince you to give them a shot.

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Jonathan KernsAugust 10, 2019

Pros

Page Load Times: Site5 claims that their hosting is for “serious web designers,” so it’s great that they deliver great page load times. At 731ms, theirs is slightly above the industry average of 850ms.
Features: Site5 offers unmetered storage and bandwidth even on their most basic subscription plan. You also get nightly backups, plus on higher subscriptions you even get unlimited websites.
Free Trial & Money-back: Site5 offers something that most other web host providers do not: a free trial. You can test drive the Site5 shared hosting subscriptions without having to spend anything at all for 30 days, and they even offer a lengthy 45-day money-back guarantee for a total of 75 days risk-free service.
Customer Support: Site5 provides excellent customer support with self-help options like an extensive knowledgebase and an FAQ section where you can find solutions on your own. They also offer 24/7 live chat support as well as telephone support manned by a capable support team.

Cons

Uptime: Site5’s uptime can be a mixed bag: one moment you get solid service, then the next you experience dips in quality. And when that happens, the uptime can actually fall below the 99.90% industry average – not by much, but still enough to cause worries.
Price: Although you can get low introductory prices, you would have to commit to the longest billing term in order to get the best price. Then there is the fact that there are other hosting providers out there that offer lower prices.
Selctive Monthly Terms: While paying for a longer term allows you to avail of a lower price but those who do not have the money to pay for the subscription upfront would go for a monthly term. However, Site5 does not offer their hostBasic plan, the lowest subscription, at monthly rates so this could set back individuals or small businesses a bit.
No Additional Domains: Subscribing to the hostBasic plan allows you hosting for only one website. While this is an affordable hosting option, it leaves you no other option other than upgrading to a higher plan, even if you only need that one particular feature.

Pricing & Features

Site5 offers 3 different types of hosting, each packed with plans that come with affordable price points and comprehensive features. There are shared hosting plans for your basic website hosting needs, plus VPS packages if you need a bit more kick. Meanwhile, those looking to start their own web hosting business can check out Site5’s reseller hosting packages as well.

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Shared Hosting: From $5.95 Per Month

Site5 has three shared hosting packages, all with unlimited space and bandwidth, plus free migration of pre-existing websites to Site5. Site5 also includes its Backstage account management software and the industry standard Softaculous web application installer. Better yet, you get premium services like nightly backups for free.

Here’s a quick look at each plan’s specifications:

Feature	hostBasic	hostPro	hostPro + Turbo
Regular Monthly Price	$5.95	$10.95	$13.95
Websites	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Dedicated IP	No	No	Yes

All these subscriptions come with a 45-day free trial, which is a great way to learn about their service and to see if it is what you are looking for in a web host. The best way to learn about a product is to try it out for yourself, and Site5 lets you do just that without any risk at all. They also provide a 45-day money back guarantee.

Other Features

One of the best features of Site5 is that they allow you to choose the location of your server. They have over 21 different locations to choose from, so you can choose the most optimum location for your website. Full disclosure, when writing this review, they only had one option available to choose from: US Central. Maybe this was a glitch on their part or something – who knows.

Beyond that, Site5 customers also get free migration services, nightly backups, eCommerce features, one-click script installs, unlimited email accounts, DNS support, and more. And the great thing about this is that you can enjoy these features regardless of your chosen subscription plan.

VPS Hosting: From $65 Monthly

Site5 has a variety of VPS hosting packages for you to choose from, each equipped with RAID-10 storage and cPanel/WHM. All of these plans are fully managed, so Site5 takes care of all the dirty work of maintaining, updating, and troubleshooting your virtual server.

Specifications range from 2 to 8 cores for your CPU, 1 to 8 GB for RAM, 50 to 400 GB for disk space, and 800 GB to 4.5 TB for bandwidth. These are all a little lackluster compared to other providers’ VPS packages, though, and it’s worth noting that you can probably get a better plan for similar prices elsewhere.

All plans come with a 15-day money-back guarantee, so you can try out Site5’s services before committing to a long-term contract.

Reseller Hosting: From $23.95 Per Month

Site5 also has three reseller hosting packages for you to check out if you’re thinking of starting your own web hosting business. All plans come with free billing software, an unlimited number of accounts that you can resell, and custom DNS nameservers to help give your business that professional feel. You’ll also get cPanel/WHM for easy account management and free nightly backups for added peace of mind.

All reseller hosting plans come with a 45-day money-back guarantee.

Guarantees

Site5 offers quite a few guarantees with their service, some of which you would greatly appreciate them having as it lets you have a better experience with a web host. They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee backed by the aforementioned 45-day money back option, so you can get a refund if you find their service unsatisfactory.

They also have a 99.9% uptime guarantee and if they don’t make good on that, Site5 credits user account with pro-rated amounts depending on the downtime they have experienced.

Uptime	Credit
100-99.9%	None
99.9-99.5%	5%
99.5-99%	10%
99-98%	15%
98-95%	25%
<95%	100%

Finally, they have a 6-hour support guarantee, not that it takes 6 hours to get a reply as Site5 averages minutes in serving a reply. They do however, guarantee a reply to your support ticket within 6 hours or they credit your account with $1 if they fail to do so.

What's the Verdict on Site5?

There Are Better Options