BEST WEB HOSTS (2009)

Host Monster
During the year 2007, Host Monster wasn’t a very reputed WebHost, with their servers failing to keep up, and a bad customer service, not much was expected of them. But have they proven the odds wrong and picked up in actuality? Read further to find out!

Features:
Host Monster provides limitless bandwidth, disk space, addon/parked/sub domains and data transfer. Along with that, they also provide 100 mySQL and Postgre databases, a decent Website builder for those with lack of sufficient coding skills, cPanel and Fantastico.
HostMonster has a modified cPanel, which appears rather neat. They also offer 1 free domain name, If you choose to transfer it away though you will need to pay a one time $10 fee to transfer it to another company. It’s free as long as you’re hosted with HostMonster. This sounds a bit shady in nature, and quite frankly it is. They also offer shopping cart program, poll/survey program, support for streaming videos and various scripts for effortless installation. The customer also gets $50 google credits and search engine submission facility.

Plans and Pricing:
3 months: $69.85 (this includes a $30 one time set up fee and $10 annual domain name registration fee)
6 months: $99.70 (this includes a $30 one time set up fee and $10 annual domain name registration fee)
1 year: $83.40 (no set up fee and 1 free domain name is included) which equals to $6.95 a month
2 years: $142.80 (no set up fee and 1 free domain name is included) which equals to $5.95 a month
3 years: $214.20 (no set up fee and 1 free domain name is included) which equals to $5.95 a month
And all the prices include the same hosting features as seen here:
***Keep in mind everything is paid up front. They don’t do any monthly payments.
***Also keep in mind 1, 2 and 3 years are promotions that are currently running.
As you can see, the minimum registration time they offer happens to be 3 months, which is a not-so-major drawback.
Also, for the 3/6 month plans you must pay a set up fee, which appears reasonably high to us. Otherwise the 1/2/3 year plans are priced decently. Overall though we would say HostMonster is a bit overpriced.

Customer Service & Liability
The customer service seems pretty good as for now. While trying out their live chat, we received pretty quick responses and precise as well. Although HostMonster has suffered from Customer Service issues in the past, it seems to us they have gotten over that phase now, considering the email reply was just as swift and spot-on. That being held, time for the vaguely bad part. Their server has had issues in the past, and till date it continues to have them, although much lesser than the older days. If you wish to host a website with extremely high traffic and data/bandwidth usage, you might want to go through the options again.

Overview:
Features: 4.5/5
Plans and Pricing: 2.5/5
Customer Service & Reliability: 3/5
Overall: 3.5/5. [Decent]

Taking an overall look, Host Monster provides decent hosting services at slightly steep rates and placidly shady terms and conditions, but they undoubtedly seem to be getting better at what they do. Not really recommended if you wish to play big on the Internet, but for small-scale purposes, this might just turn out to be a fine option. Sign Up Now!.