HostPapa Review

HostPapa combines the advantages of eco-friendly hosting with beginner-friendly packages to respond to the hosting needs of novices and small businesses on a budget. Their brand name suggests both that they’ve been around for a while and that their services are as user friendly as they come, being suitable even for mom-and-pop businesses that want to get online.

Let’s see in this HostPapa review how the company measures up to the big players in the industry, and whether they might be a good hosting solution for you.

Quick Overview of HostPapa

HostPapa has been around for more than a decade, which hardly makes them a newcomer to the industry. They’re an independently owned Canadian hosting company with data centers in North America and an eye on global markets.

Their hosting services focus on four categories — shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS and reseller – complemented by other web services like domain registration, website building, web security tools, and email hosting.

HostPapa are a green hosting company, who offset 100% of their energy consumption by putting the equivalent of their consumption back into the grid. Their commitment to renewable energy, however, doesn’t translate into higher prices for their services.

HostPapa Hosting Plans

Shared hosting and WordPress hosting each feature three hosting tiers, while VPS and reseller plans each have five hosting tiers.

The Starter plan in the shared hosting category offers 100 GB disk space and hosting for two websites, while the two other plans are designed as unlimited plans, offering unlimited disk space, bandwidth and website hosting. A free domain registration is included with each plan. Prices for shared hosting start at $3.95/month.

WordPress hosting is also available starting at $3.95/month. The WP Starter package builds on the shared hosting Starter plan, but also includes WordPress specific features like WordPress caching, CloudFlare CDN, enhanced SSD drives for better performance, free SSL, and 24/7 WordPress support.

HostPapa’s entry-level VPS plan (Plus plan) has a starting price of $19.99/month and includes 4 core CPU, 1.5 GB memory, 50 GB storage, and 1 TB transfer. All plans in this category are managed VPS plans, which means that everything from network issues to software updates and firewall setup is taken care of for you. These plans also feature SSD servers and root level access.

Reseller hosting plans start with the Bronze plan, which costs $19.95/month. The plan comes with 50 GB disk space, 500 GB bandwidth, enhanced SSD drives, brandable cPanel and WHM control panel, and a long list of security, performance enhancing, and script installation tools.

HostPapa Customer Support

Customer support at HostPapa can be accessed via email, phone, or live chat. The company aptly named its support team the PapaSquad.

Their Customer Care Center page has easy access to all available support options including a knowledge base, a section with video tutorials, a network status monitoring page to check for scheduled downtimes, and a page offering support ticket submission tips.

As for the responsiveness and knowledgeability of the support team, HostPapa ranks high compared to other budget hosting providers. They also offer multilingual support, which is quite rare even at big hosting companies. Currently, support is available in the following foreign languages: English, French, Spanish, and German. And because the company has set its eyes on global markets, other languages are soon to follow.

Hosting Features of HostPapa

Now that we know a few things about the web hosting options and introductory prices at HostPapa, let’s see what the best hosting features to look forward to when signing up with them:

• Free domain registration with 12-month contracts;
• Free site builder tool;
• Free cPanel control panel;
• Unlimited domain hosting;
• No overage charges;
• Automatic backups, malware scan and removal;
• 99.9% uptime guarantee;
• Green web hosting;
• SSD disks with WordPress plans and higher;
• WordPress optimized hosting options;
• Free SSL certificates;
• eCommerce capabilities;
• Available anytime 24/7 support;
• Free website migration;
• Extensive knowledgebase;
• 1-click script installs;
• 30-day no risk guarantee;
• Managed VPS plans.

These are just some of the features that make this web host a more than viable option for beginners and small companies or startups that want a reliable service without the hefty price tag or features they can’t make use of.

You can consult the entire list of features for each hosting category on the company’s website. You can compare plans within the same category to see which plan has all the features you need for your website.

HostPapa Pros & Cons

As a summary of this HostPapa review, let’s see what are the pros and cons of becoming their customer:

Pros:

• Transparent hosting with a focus on being both user friendly and affordable;
• Good features across all plans;
• Multilingual support and multiple support channels available;
• Certified green hosting;
• SSD on most plans;
• 99.9% uptime guarantee;
• Independently-owned company;
• Free site migration;
• No overage charges.

Cons:

• Shared and WordPress plans are only available with yearly contracts.
• Website builder included for free is limited to 3 pages and 120 design templates, for unlimited pages, you’ll need an upgrade (the Unlimited plan starts at $9.99/month);
• Some upsells at checkout.

Conclusion

HostPapa’s allure for a beginner or small business owner is two-fold: they’re a friendly hosting that’s easy to use and they’re a hosting committed to supporting renewable energy. The company offers useful features with their hosting packages that respond to the needs of many first-time website owners.

If you’re considering them for hosting your small personal website or for launching your WordPress blog, you can easily start out with an entry level WordPress plan.

If you want to add eCommerce capabilities to your blog or small business website, HostPapa has you covered in this department as well, providing credit card and PayPal payment integration and several shopping cart integration solutions.

Even though they market themselves as an affordable choice, their hosting plans are quite competitive in terms of the technologies used. Features such as SSDs, cPanel control panel, caching tools, CDN implementation, and security tools are the mark of a web hosting company that values performance and security.