There is no exact date as to when Site5 started. It is mentioned, however, in the company’s page that it had been operating for at least 11 years now and is spearheaded by Ben Welch-Bolen who had been in the webhosting industry for more than 10 years now. Because he is the CEO and Co-owner of Site5, he sets the long term goals of the company. Aside from Ben, other high-rank people that are expert in their own field are working in Site5. Just like Vince Stratful who is the chief technology officer, among site5’s first employees since 2000 and used to be the most senior level systems administrator. He plans the upgrade and overlooks network structure. These two people I have mentioned works also in the field area of Site5 and had experienced first-hand what the company needs. Not that they don’t have anyone to do it for them, but it is believed that nothing will beat their own experience when it comes to assessing things the company needs.
Value for Money
There are no gimmicks or hidden charges here in Site5. If after choosing a plan there is an upgrade you chose to avail, there would be a confirmation first displaying the new price so there’s no need to worry about additional charges unknown to us. In fact, guarantees are given with 15 days up to 45 days depending on what the service is. There might be some of us asking why there is a guarantee as low as 15 days where other providers are offering 30 days. Actually, that 30-day guarantee given by other providers is what our 45-day guarantee competes with. While the 15-day guarantee we are offering is for other services that is normally not covered by the warranty in other providers like managed and unmanaged VPS hosting.
For the webhosting plan only the hostpro and hostpro+turbo are available for monthly payments with $10.95/month and $13.95/month respectively. There would be a $1 discount for both accounts’ monthly payment if we signed up for a year, and a $2 monthly discount for 24 months. The most basic plan which is the hostbasic needs to be signed up for at least a year at $5.95/mo and with a $1 discount for monthly if signed up for 24 months. All these 3 plans are guaranteed to have 99.9% uptime guarantee and have unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Aside from the price, there are also differences in some features, like the number of websites supported, which is unlimited for hostpro and hostpro+turbo only, while the dedicated IP feature is only available for hostpro+turbo. There is also Cloud hosting that although offers limited disk space and bandwidth depending on how much is the plan we are getting, it has other added features very important to web sites not even tolerating downtime even in the event of hardware failure. It is perfect for those business websites that are not that busy and doesn’t have the resources to have a dedicated server but still wants an enterprise quality hardware and uptime.
Performance & Reliability
Site5 assures customers that there will be no overloaded server. The experience that the management got over the past years makes them decide that it should be high-end servers, and low-number of customers per server to ensure reliability 24 hours a day. Hardware platforms are also upgraded continually for optimum performance. The people operating the technical service are all in-house position. Because the company believes that although it can save more money in outsourcing to help expand the business, there’s also a higher risk of customer getting angry just because the support personnel doesn’t understand the problem or has some communication barrier.
Support
Most web hosting companies offer a credit back policy in down time. Yes, Site5 is one of them, but this doesn’t mean that the company can just irresponsibly ignore down servers and let customers wait since it can credit back anyway. Aside from having technical support team who are employed in-house, there is a 6-hour support response guarantee. The trouble ticket created for the concern should be taken care within 6 hours but it usually takes just within few minutes. A $1 credit can be requested for every ticket not resolved within 6 hours. Site5 also has different credit-back scheme if the uptime goes below 99.9% of the time, and with less than 99.5% as the lowest possible uptime credit-back scheme that will make customers get a 100% credit.
Ease of Use
Site5 web hosting is equipped with Backstage account manager. This allows the user to manage everything about the account without the need to jump from website to website if ever managing more than one website. Aside from being easy to understand, support team also has quick access here where a live chat support can be reached quickly.
Important to Know
Yes Site5 manages free migration of account from old web hosting account, but this is only available from Monday to Friday, 11am – 8pm Eastern Time.
Summary
Basically, Site5 caters to people who needs web hosting, whether it’s for blog sites or personal use, or a corporate business. However, the accounts available are a bit costly than most providers, with a dollar or two monthly difference in the cheapest plan, that’s also available only with a 12-month contract. But these are all made worth it by the added features not present on other provider’s basic account. So to say, even those plans used only for personal business like online store, the service level provided are almost like a corporate-grade webhosting.
Here are some other reviews from of the best web hosting provider review sites for Site5:
