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Arvixe Review 2024 – Why There Are so Many Mixed Reviews

Gwen Rodgers Gwen Rodgers Web Hosting Expert

Arvixe isn’t going to overwhelm you with its features, but it does offer most of what you need to get started, and it has decent live chat support. The prices are okay, you won’t be surprised by any high renewal charges, and the refund policy is honored with no questions asked.

We hosted the same WordPress website on the most popular web hosting platforms and measured their performance
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Overview

Can Arvixe Live Up to Its Claims?

To compare the best web hosts, we hosted the same WordPress website on each one and tested performance, customer service, and value for money. Check out the results here.

Arvixe was founded in 2003, in San Luis Obispo, California. According to the website, which is available in English only, it serves thousands of customers around the world and has won awards for being “one of the fastest-growing hosting companies.”

It offers a decent range of hosting services, from regular shared hosting (both Windows and Linux) to VPS and dedicated server packages. Arvixe says it’s a one-stop shop host, providing everything you need to launch and maintain a website.

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Arvixe was recently acquired by hosting giant EIG (or Endurance International Group, if you want to be formal). EIG also owns the likes of Bluehost and SiteBuilder, and some reviewers say these companies tend to go downhill after the buyouts.

Is this the case for Arvixe? Or does it offer a “rare combination of unmatched reliability, quality, and affordability,” like its website boldly claims? But, more importantly, is it right for you?

I spent a week testing Arvixe, setting up a test WordPress website, running speed tests, chatting with customer service, and so on. By the end of this review, you’ll know whether it’s a good choice for your website.

Let’s get started.

4.5

Features

Something for Everyone

Arvixe offers free daily backups, plenty of email security features, and free website migrations. But if you’re looking for a free SSL certificate, that’s only included in the VPS or Business plans, and a Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN) isn’t included at all (the team can help you configure one though).

So those are the basics—now let’s take a look at some of the most interesting features Arvixe has to offer.

Decent Uptime Guarantee

Arvixe offers an industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is backed by compensation of a full month of hosting fees.

Developer Features

Arvixe offers a variety of developer features, including the usual support for PHP, phpMyAdmin, MySQL databases, as well as less common features like Ruby on Rails, Python, Cron jobs, and Git.

However, if you’re interested in any of this, be sure to double-check which software version you’ll be getting. They’re not always listed, and some are very old, like PHP 5 (the latest version is 7.3).

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One-Stop Shop

There’s a good balance of beginner features as well. Even if you have minimal technical experience, you’ll find nearly everything you need to get started. Included in the packages, there’s SiteBuilder, Softaculous, cPanel, and free website migrations, all of which are huge bonuses and time-savers for beginner website owners.

Comprehensive Plans

All of the plans come with unmetered disk space, bandwidth, and subdomains, unlimited email accounts, and a free domain name. Plus, even on the base plan, you can host up to six domains.

4.5

Ease of use

Create an Account

The interface to create an account is functional and direct to the point. No fancy pages here. I created an account and paid within about five minutes, with no bugs or glitches. There’s a handful of add-ons you can select, such as an SSL certificate, but be wary—they can be expensive.

Connect a Domain and Install WordPress

To test how easy it is to use Arvixe, I set up a small WordPress website and connected a domain. The entire process took me less than ten minutes, largely thanks to the combination of cPanel and Softaculous. If you’re getting started and need some help, you can follow my step-by-step instructions here.

User-Friendly Software

Arvixe offers reputable software options, including cPanel and Softaculous, which most website owners are familiar with. Even if you don’t have any experience with those tools, they’re not complicated to use, and you’ll understand them in no time.

Security Features

Arvixe comes with plenty of security features, so you don’t need to worry about setting up extras when you’re getting started. To give you an idea, even the base plan comes with all of these features designed to keep your site and email accounts protected:

  • DDoS Attack Response
  • Firewall
  • Brute Force Detection
  • Nightly Security Updates
  • Spam Blocker
  • Spamhaus & SpamCop Checks
  • Manual Email Filtering

E-commerce Hosting

If you’re interested in hosting an e-commerce store, Arvixe offers a specialist Magento hosting plan that includes a Magento-optimized site with scalable resources. However, it’s not clear what’s included, and the product page is buggy.

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Daily Backups

All of Arvixe’s plans come with daily automatic backups, which is often an added cost with other companies. But this feature comes with a big caveat—Arvixe does not take any responsibility for retaining your backups. As always, you should maintain your own backups just in case.

4.6

Performance

A Pleasant Surprise

Before I set up my WordPress website with Arvixe, I’d read some negative reviews from past customers and from other expert reviews. Some cited load speeds of more than seven seconds, while others claimed an average uptime of less than 90%. Ouch.

Needless to say, I wanted to check out the performance for myself. I ran a speed load test using Sucuri on my small WordPress website, and I was impressed by the results. With an overall score of A+, it’s hard to complain.

Unsurprisingly, since the servers are in the U.S., the website scored best in Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York (U.S.), and Montreal (Canada). But it also scored well in most European locations.

I couldn’t tell you why my results differ from other reviews online—perhaps Arvixe improved based on poor feedback. If speed is important to you, I’d recommend using the 45-day money-back period to run your own speed tests.

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3.0

Support

One Main Channel

Customer service is quite limited in terms of options, but it is available 24/7. You can contact the team by live chat, email, or support ticket. Alternatively, if you like to figure out solutions yourself, you can refer to the substantial knowledge base.

While there is a discussion forum, it’s more of an update page for the company to post server status messages. Read on to learn about my experience with customer support during my time as a paying customer.

Email Support

I sent the team an email asking a basic sales question—what’s your uptime guarantee? Unfortunately, despite waiting for three days, I didn’t hear back. I’d usually expect a far quicker response, or any response at all, so it was disappointing.

Live Chat

In my experience, this is the best (if not the only) way to contact Arvixe. Each time I did, the agent picked up instantly and helped me politely. I asked basic questions (e.g., Do you offer a free SSL certificate? Is a Cloudflare CDN included?), and the agent was always well informed.

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Support Ticket

Although there’s an option to contact customer service via support ticket inside the customer dashboard, I wasn’t able to get it to work. I was always prompted to verify my email address, which I’d already done. At least support via live chat was easy.

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4.0

Pricing

Arvixe claims to be an affordable host, but it’s prices aren’t overly cheap. In fact, they are a little higher than some other similar companies on the market. You do get a free domain with all plans, but you’ll need to sign up for a one- or two-year plan to benefit from the best prices. You can pay by credit card or PayPal.

Cancellations & Refunds

Arvixe offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, which gives you plenty of time to get into the dashboard and test the features.

If you decide to cancel, all you need to do is log into your dashboard and select the applicable service. Then select Request Cancellation from the left-hand side. This will open a quick form to complete, and your account is automatically canceled.

It’s all straightforward, but I encountered a minor problem. The cancellation form displayed a message at the top stating, “Refund Status: Account is not eligible for a refund.” Since I was still within the 45-day money-back period, I immediately reached out via live chat to seek assistance.

The agent instantly picked up and confirmed I was eligible for a refund, but it needed to be manually applied. They quickly refunded my account and provided a receipt. I was advised to check my bank account for the returned money in five to seven business days. I was pleased to find that the full refund was in my bank account the next day.

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A free domain name is included with some hosting plans from Arvixe

Comparison

How does Arvixe match up to the competition?

KamateraCompareOur Score4.8Compare
Liquid WebCompareOur Score4.8Compare
ArvixeCompareOur Score4.3Compare
Tailor Made ServersCompareOur Score2.9Compare

Arvixe REVIEW: BOTTOM LINE

Arvixe isn’t going to overwhelm you with its features, but it does offer most of what you need to get started, and it has decent live chat support. The prices are okay, you won’t be surprised by any high renewal charges, and the cancellation policy is honored with no questions asked.

Due to outdated versions of some software and limited customer support options, it isn’t quite that “rare combination of unmatched reliability, quality, and affordability” – but overall, I found Arvixe to be a decent all-around option.

Arvixe might offer a good service at a reasonable price, but does it match up with the top web hosting companies? We find it hard to say “yes.”

FAQ

Which is the best web host for shared hosting?

Arvixe has a lot to offer, from unmetered storage and data transfer to a solid set of features, including a free domain name and SSL certificates. But Hostinger is number one on our list of the 10 best shared hosting providers for 2024. Read our full Hostinger review to find out why.

Is Arvixe good value for money?

While Arvixe does provide a generous amount of resources and free features, its prices are high. Check out our coupons page to find discounts on many of the industry’s top hosting providers that will give you better value than Arvixe.

What is the difference between shared hosting and WordPress hosting?

You can run a WordPress website on most shared hosting plans, but WordPress hosting is optimized to boost your WordPress site’s performance and give your visitors the best experience.

Arvixe offers a WordPress-optimized environment, but if you want the fastest and most reliable options, take a look at our list of the top WordPress hosts in 2024.

Does Arvixe have cPanel?

All Arvixe shared hosting plans come with cPanel, as well as the Softaculous script installer. Its VPS hosting plans include the cPanel/WHM control panel.
Gwen Rodgers Gwen Rodgers
Gwen is a web developer and software engineer who loves to get lost in JavaScript (and a good book). She spends her free time teaching girls how to be coders, and doing yoga on her balcony in the sunshine.
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Stay away from arvixe

50 Days migrating, 7 days site, email, dns down. Paid in advance, and I´m a hostage now. They did not give my data back. Database and files, can´t move with the most recent data... Stay away from arvixe or you will regret have your business under this service.

avatar
Rui Motolink, Brazil
October 17, 2022
1
Its a nightmare

Our company's website which is used by our customers to purchase products from us has been inaccessible for the past month. And this is despite numerous plea to Arvixe , this is a critical time for our company and we pray we will be able to survive this.Their response to us is our website is been migrated to another server and will be unavailable until Nov 7th. Also poor feature is the inability to send email to yahoo.com accounts from our website.

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Sheila James, Jamaica
October 13, 2022
1
Long-time Arvixie Customer — Great Service!

I have been an Arvixe customer since 2009 (12 years and counting!), and I have never considered leaving them. Their prices are very good, and their service and uptime have been well above 99%. Customer support options have shrunk over the years (they used to have phone support), but they still are very knowledgeable and will do their best to answer your problems while in a chat with you. I'm not sure why so many people have hated Arvixe, and I'm assuming it's user error and not Arvixe in the end. Arvixe is great and I will continue using them for years to come.

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Bryce Scott, USA
March 30, 2021
5
I have been happy with them

On Arvixe since 2013. No uptime issues, it's worked; support has been quick when I've needed them. For a small system, it has been fine. Not sure what I'd be asking from a competitor that would make me move. Dev interfaces slower these days, tho.

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Basil McDonnell, Canada
June 09, 2020
4
Gwen… are you getting paid by arvixe

I have been dealing with arvixe for 4 years... the service has been terrible. THEY DO NOT honor their guarantees as you say. Their chat support is terrible they do not get back to you. I can give you at least 10 tickets that we have open with chat support that has not been solved. Please be honest in the reviews so other customers will not fall for a company like this.

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Antonio Prado, Mexico
May 12, 2020
1
terrible costumer service

If can choose some other hosting services, please do. Costumer service is appalling. they will give every excuse possible to not refund you for something you don't need. I actually felt I was scammed after paying for this for almost 7 years.

avatar
Carlos, Netherlands
February 24, 2020
1
Get out while you can if you can

This is the worst company I've ever dealt with and that's saying something. It's not that their service is bad it simply no longer exists. Somewhere in their contract, it says you must call or go to their web site and cancel your service to stop them from charging your credit card. What they don't tell you is when you call them you get a recording sending you to their web site and then it immediately hangs up! Then you go to the web site and there is no place at all to cancel the service. You can fill out a ticket but that's totally ignored. God help you is your web site goes down! It's not that this company is just bad. They are now criminals! They didn't start out this way. The company was sold a few years ago and whoever bought it is simply taking everything they can out as quickly as they can as long as they can and putting nothing back in. I'm sure the lights will be out soon if it hasn't already happened. Don't let them take your company down with them!

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Gary Workman, USA
February 17, 2020
1
It would turn your life to a nightmare

Worst service and slow and bad support. a lot of downtimes. no transparency. moreover, they will not let you leave or transfer your domains easily. I did not want to renew and wanted to transfer my domain and hosting to another company. They told me I must renew to move!!! Then I asked to renew only the domain, they refused. After a lot of complaints and unnecessary debate, they did renew the domain only. I moved and moved my domain and will never be back.

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Ashraf, Saudi Arabia
February 10, 2020
1
Family sharingMulti User SharingExpert SupportBackupSmart syncPersonal SolutionBusiness SolutionTeams optionsOffline foldersFile history and recovery
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