ControlVM (tagline “Your Solid Hosting Provider) is a Malaysia-based business. Incorporated in 2017, the company has its own Malaysian data center as well as servers colocated in the U.K., U.S., and Singapore. Customers come from more than 40 countries around the world in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, other Asian countries, and (of course) Malaysia. Their website is provided in English.
Features and Ease of Use
This full service hosting company offers a wide range of hosting services. To give you a sense of their offerings, here are some of the core features enjoyed by shared hosting customers:
- 99.8% network uptime guarantee
- Automatic backups available at extra cost
- Domain registration available at extra cost
- Five, ten, twenty, or thirty add-on domains
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
- 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, or 50GB cloud storage
- 200GB, 300GB, 500GB, or 500GB monthly data
As already stated in my introduction, ControlVM owns its own data center in Malaysia (which is great for response times to technical issues), and they also colocate servers in Singapore, Europe, the U.S., the U.K., Asia, and the Middle East (which is helpful for international customers). This all means geo-distributed DNS over three continents, for faster DNS propagation.
ControlVM’s servers run on CloudLinux, which is known for being a secure and stable operating system, and they use SSD storage for disk read/write speeds of up to ten times faster than traditional hard disk drives. It’s also nice to see that this company’s 99.8% network uptime guarantee is backed by a service level agreement.
Looking at the value-added features, ControlVM provides a premium Softaculous installer and a drag-and-drop website builder at no extra cost so that beginners can get set up quickly and easily with minimal technical experience. There are also some useful security features such as Apache SpamAssassin, a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, and CageFS.
In terms of advanced features, this provider’s website also mentions PHP, Cloudflare, Perl, Redis, and Node.js. But they don’t go into any more detail.
Pricing and Support
Prices are quite low compared with local and international shared hosting companies, but they’re appropriate for the value-added resources on offer. Most everyday website owners can grab a bargain by sticking with the cheapest plan that comes with 20GB cloud storage, five domains, 200GB monthly data, and a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. Domain registration costs extra.
They only offer plans on annual payment terms, which may not be very flexible but is understandable considering the low prices. Fortunately, all plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can sign up with relatively low risk.
Support is available by phone, email (to various departments), WhatsApp, and live chat. I contacted the company via live chat when it was offline, but received an email response within minutes that resolved my issue completely and politely. If you can’t find an answer you’re looking for in their online knowledge base, they also invite you to submit a ticket.
