WebHostingPad Review & Rating on Hosting Joomla

Joomla is one the the most popular content management systems for web hosting. It can be used to run personal pages, small and medium-sized companies’ sites or e-commerce sites. At present about 2.7% of all the websites out there are built on Joomla. That’s why this website of ours matters.

In the past few months, we have received emails from our readers asking whether WebHostingPad’s Joomla hosting worth going. To satisfy their curiosity, we started to host two Joomla sites with this company last month. Based on our real hosting experience, we have come out with a comprehensive review and an overall rating.

As usual, this review focuses on price, features, performance and technical support. Before we come to detailed analysis, please take a look at its overall rating to get a general idea first.

WebHostingPad Review

Website: http://www.webhostingpad.com/

• Reputation
  
• Feature
  
• Reliability
  
• Speed
  
• Support
  
• Price
  $3.99/mo

Plans and Pricing

Formed in 2005, WebHostingPad managed to make a presence by playing the price card. In fact, it had no other trump card at all. It offers two web hosting plans – one is Power, the other Power Plus. The price for a Power plan can be as low as $1.99/mo without any hidden fees. Payment methods are flexible – credit card, PayPal or Alipay. Besides, it promises 30-day money back guarantee.

This sounds truly tempting. But note that this price is only valid for a minimal billing circle of three years. A one year plan charges at least $3.99/mo. Besides, the refunding process can be very troublesome. Once people cancel within 30 days of purchase, they have to pay $14.95 for the domain name. Ironically, the domain name is free according to their hosting features. There might be more such tricks.

Features

Both Power and Power Plus cover a package of relatively complete features. Their common features include:

• Unlimited space, bandwidth, additional domains, email accounts and MySQL database
• cPanelcontrol panel, Softaculous script support, SSI, Spam protection
• Bonus features: Message Board, PHP Nuke, Image Galleries, Mambo and Joomla, HP/Perl/Python, etc

The Power Plus Plan is richer in features. Beside what mentioned above, it also offers SSL Certificate, SSH Access, Advanced Spam Filter and a series of e-commerce features. These additional features are useful in guaranteeing security but they come with a price.

Successful Joomla hosting is possible only when the core features of a plan are perfectly compatible with this content management system. Admittedly, there are MySQL databases and PHP in WebHostingPad’s hosting features. That is, they meet Joomla hosting requirements. But it doesn’t specify the versions. So the features may not be so outstanding or compatible.

Performance

WebHostingPad has taken some concrete measures to guarantee speed and uptime. In specific, it employs 4 OC-48 connections for fast transmission speed. OC-48 connections can be trusted because they are used as the backbones of many regional ISPs. Besides OC-48 connections, WebHostingPad also utilizes redundant fiber connections and Tier-1 providers to ensure data always take the quickest and most efficient routes.

To ensure the servers are always up, WebHostingPad has installed Mitsubishi UPS battery system in case of diesel generator failure. The data center is located in an optimum environment with fire suppression system, monitoring system and cooling system. That’s why it claims 99.999%.

This claim is too bold. The plain truth is that it has only one data center while most web hosts have two or three. It can be disastrous when this data center breaks down.

Customer Support

WebHostingPad offers 24/7 U.S. based support via phone, live chat and email. It has even won some award for excellent customer service. To figure out whether this is true, we submitted a ticket consulting for their Joomla hosting service but received no reply. We phoned them, but the line was always busy. We resorted to live chat, but the response time was disappointing.

The most interesting thing is that the latest article in their knowledgebase was published on 25 Sept 2013. That was almost a year ago. This is just one example of their poor customer service.

Conclusion-Not Recommended

We finally come to the conclusion that WebHostingPad is not a good choice for Joomla hosting. We do not recommend it for any purpose of hosting because the price is deceptive, the features are not advanced, the performance is unreliable and the support lags far behind.

For people who are looking for quality Joomla hosting providers, we recommend them the following three web hosts. They are all leading web hosts who live up to their reputation.

Rank	Company	Highlights	Price
1	BlueHost	Free domain name & unlimited site hosting PHP, MySQL 5, Python, Perl, SSH, suPHP, SSL Enhanced cPanel, SimpleScripts, Shell Access Serving for over 3 million of sites since 1996 Learn more at http://www.bluehost.com/	$2.95/mo
2	InMotion	Business-class web hosting service Automated daily backup & Max Speed Zone 90 days refund & 100% customer satisfaction 24×7 support with 30 seconds holding time Learn more at http://www.inmotionhosting.com/	$3.49/mo
3	HostGator	1,000+ employees & 1,000,000+ customers 24×7 US support via phone, live chat & email 99.9% uptime & 45 days refund guarantee $100 Google AdWords & $50 Yahoo credits Learn more at http://www.hostgator.com/	$3.82/mo