AdvanceHost has been a well-known web hosting provider in the fast-growing Brazilian market since 2004. It provides innovative, high-quality hosting services at reasonable prices from a properly-designed but Portuguese-only website.
Features and Ease of Use
This Brazilian vendor focuses on providing premium shared hosting, audio/video streaming hosting, and reseller hosting, plus separate FTP backup hosting plans. Some of the main features you can look forward to with the shared hosting packages are:
- Guaranteed 100% uptime
- 2 GB to 100 GB SSD storage
- Free SSL certificate
- CloudLinux
- Website builder
- Software auto-installer
- cPanel
Beginners with little technical background will appreciate AdvanceHost’s SitePad website builder, cPanel on CloudLinux, and the Softaculous auto-installer with over 400 scripts. You get a free SSL certificate and cPanel migration with every hosting subscription, and unlimited resources (including unlimited traffic, unlimited FTP accounts, and unlimited databases).
It’s not all good news. The shared hosting storage is somewhat limited (maybe because it’s SSD), the cPanel is in Portuguese (and it’s not clear if it is also available in English), and there is no free domain with hosting plans. PHP support is limited to v5.5.
This host puts particular focus on audio and video streaming. It offers several TV, live video, and on-demand streaming plans with full HD quality, a built-in API, an Android app, Flash and HTML5 players, and much more.
AdvanceHost has three technologically advanced green data centers in Canada, Europe, and the U.S.A. that promise 100% network uptime, especially for the aforementioned audio/video streaming.
Pricing and Support
AdvanceHost offers very affordable prices, but note that the standard web hosting plans are all “sold out” so you have to opt for one of the eight premium hosting plans. These all come with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited FTP accounts, a free SSL certificate, and free site migration, and they differ mainly in terms of the storage capacity and the number of email accounts.
You can pay for plans by bank transfer, PayPal, or credit card. AdvanceHost’s packages are non-refundable, but a support agent did tell me that you can request a refund in the event of problems with the service. You can also take advantage of a 3-day free trial that gives you just a little time to test the services.
For self-support, AdvanceHost provides a pretty extensive knowledge base, and remote assistance can be provided via TeamViewer. Support channels include a website contact form, email, telephone, and live chat. I’d prefer the live chat to be available outside of business hours, but I did find the live chat agent to be friendly and helpful (in English):
