Web Hosting Lab

Page 2 - HostMonster benchmark results

HostMonster – sounds frightfully, doesn’t it :) Their hosting plan is really a monster - 200 GB disk space, 2000 GB traffic, unlimited domains and many extras such as ruby on rails and PostgreSQL. They claim to have the best support team in the industry. I’ll test it to see for myself. The order procedure went fast – I got a hosting account immediately and began to examine their billing system and control panel. Their billing system is very easy to use (though a bit ugly) and contains everything – registered domains control, new domain registration option, automatic login to the cPanel, etc. The cPanel itself has a similar template to the billing system’s (i.e. it too is a bit ugly according to my taste), but works fast and does a good job. Also, having in mind that almost everything in this cPanel is “unlimited” – you wouldn’t really need another hosting company. You have everything included – the ability to host unlimited domains, unlimited DBs, emails, etc. Blimey! These “unlimited” things know no boundaries!
Now is the time for me to ask for more company and server info. I opened a ticket and asked a question about the servers. Two hours passed but I still didn’t have an answer. Afterwards, I seemed to have forgotten about the ticket. It wasn’t until today (26 Jan 2007) that I decided to check whether there was an answer of any kind. To my horror, I found out that the ticket was replied to. Why to my horror you may ask? Because their answer came 5 days after I opened the ticket. What’s more – they did not know which domain is mine, i.e. I had obviously failed to enter my domain when I opened the ticket. Their ticket system isn’t connected to either the billing or the cPanel system and they don’t know who opens the ticket in reality unless it is mentioned in the ticket by the person who opens it. There is a field where one can fill in a domain but it’s not compulsory, i.e. you can open a ticket without entering a domain.. but why bother since they don’t know who you are and what your problem is?!?! Good.. I must give them one more chance – I answered the ticket.. but nothing showed up inside the ticket itself. Strange. I opened a new ticket with the same question (this time I mentioned my domain). I checked the ticket history – there wasn’t a trace of my new ticket. Where could it have gone? It got lost! I opened a ticket once more and decided to pay good attention to what the page would display after the opening. It said namely: "Your new ticket has been sent successfully. Thanks for contacting us!" Further up the page there was another text which informed me "Error: Cannot connect to localhost". Yes.. now I found out what had happened – my answer to the ticket and the two tickets I tried to open hadn’t reached HostMonster’s support team. Well, they might have had problems with user’s hosting accounts, but what about the ticketing system?! They have one ticketing system. Don’t they test it? For me, this is absurd. First off - HostMonster.com’s index says "Best Support in the Industry". They give an answer to the tickets (if you manage to open one at all, that is) 5 days later!! On top of that, there’s a little probability that you actually manage to open a ticket at all. A few days later, I decided to try to contact their support team again. This time I was lucky – as if by some miracle, they replied in less than an hour. But for me, it definitely isn’t the kind of customer support one would dream of. Out of 3 trials only one was successful – enough said.

After my big disappointment with their technical support, it is time to write something about their speed as well. To tell you the truth – I thought that HostMonster would wind up together with LunarPages in terms of speed, since the benchmark tests I ran a week or so ago were very good. Well, they do have some things to work on – for example, both of the PHP stress tests had failed requests. On the other hand, the MySQL stress test results were as good as those of LunarPages. You’d better have a look at the results and judge for yourselves.

Pros:
+ a very good and complete client/billing area
+ a cPanel control panel, which is very fast
+ many extras (ruby on rails, PostgreSQL) and unlimited features
+ fast hosting of regular hosting sites

Cons:
- failed requests during the two PHP stress tests
- their ticketing system and the customer support they provide are not reliable enough

Page 2 - HostMonster benchmark results