HostRocket Web Hosting Review

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Support:
Features:
Reliability:
Value:

IP Address	Service	Status	Response Time	Last Monitored
216.120.225.4	HTTP		0.216 secs	05-13-2008 22:20:00pm
216.120.225.4	HTTP		0.284 secs	05-13-2008 22:10:00pm
216.120.225.4	HTTP		0.482 secs	05-13-2008 22:00:01pm
216.120.225.4	HTTP		0.195 secs	05-13-2008 21:50:00pm

HostRocket.com Profile and Background

HostRocket is headquartered in Clifton Park, NY, and one of the few web hosting companies that operates its own data center facility in the same location. It is a company that claims to have no debt, positive cash flow and a fiscally strong business. However, it is privately held and no financial details are released.

The company’s network bandwidth is primarily provided by Time Warner Telecommunications (TMT) nationwide network through redundant OC-12 fiber loop. TMT’s network in turn has peering agreements with other tier-1 providers including AT&T, Broadwing, MCI-Worldcom, Cell One, Global Crossing, Pae Tec, Qwest, Telergy, Level 3, and Williams.

The network infrastructure is attached to UPS and backup diesel generators incase the supply of electricity is interrupted.

Services and Product

The web hosting product/service range of HostRocket is extensive, and can serve clientele with an array of web hosting requirements from shared to application hosting. The web hosting packages operating from a virtual shared environment and the company’s dedicated server line is powered by the Linux operating system Redhat.

The price range of the services varies depending on your needs with shared hosting packages starting from $14.95/month and high-end dedicated servers from $129/month. Dedicated servers are purchased through one of HostRocket’s subsidiaries/sister company RackFast. However, for our web hosting review purposes, we decided on the “Giga Sale” web hosting plan.

Value for Money

The “RocketOne” web hosting plan comprised of 1GB storage, 50GB monthly data transfer allowance, 100MB mail storage and unlimited e-mail accounts. We purchased the plan on an annual term basis for $14.95/month but if you pre-pay for 2 years it falls down to $6.95/month.

This product is a mixed bag with regards to value for money.

Our purchase of the plan on a yearly contract did not include any incentives such as free domain name or access to free marketing tools or services. If you do not have a domain name and want to purchase one through HostRocket will set you back $20/year. Also, there is no webpage building tools for the non-technical customers. On the bright side, HostRocket offer generous storage, bandwidth and e-mail accounts. It even provides a dedicated 100MB for mail storage.

HostRocket employs the use of an outsourced solution, CPanel, when it comes to the control panel software. We found it to very intuitive, similar to H-Sphere, and provided plenty of features for the end-user to tinker with. It offers the standard features including pre-installed scripts, web stats, e-mail management, and etc. The graphical interface/skin is very easy on the eye and provided us with the tools we needed to manage the account on a day-to-day basis.

Customer Support

The two primarily ways to contact Hostrocket for support is either through the ticketing system, support form or the community forums. First, we sent in a support ticket through the control panel and measured the response times. It took them over 10 hours for a response for a few control panel queries. This wasn’t too bad until we sent in a second support ticket and it took over two days to get a reply. We expected a consistent performance but were disappointed.

The community forums are active and you can ask your questions but not all threads are answered by other users or forum administrators. It’s more of a touch-and-go.

There is also a dedicated website containing a knowledge base of FAQs and other HostRocket web hosting account information that may help users who want to trouble shoot their own problems and queries. The KB is quite extensive.

Network Reliability and Performance

Over the two months that we tested and monitored the performance of company’s network, we detected just over 15 minutes of downtime. Most of the time when the site was up, we found it to be responsive and very little ‘lag’. It seems the Time Warner network is reasonably reliable, and offers a great platform for HostRocket’s network operations.

With respect to redundancy, we would have liked the company to rely on other tier-1 providers for secondary fiber feeds into the data center facility. Just in case the Time Warner fiber had problems or issues affecting the reliability or/and performance of the network.

Conclusion

Overall, HostRocket scored well in most areas, particularly, in its product and service range. For customers, particularly existing clients, that require an upgrade to higher-end web hosting service then it makes things a lot smoother than just moving to another web host.

The area where it needs to focus more on is customer support i.e. toll free support line, general response times and improving the value of its shared web hosting plans. Include features such as free domain name and access to web site building tools for annual signups because if you want customers to commit for a year, you need incentives. All in all, HostRocket provides all the essentials to give you a good web hosting experience.

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