U.S.-based Crucial Hosting has been providing web hosting solutions for clients around the world since 2006. They provide plans with great basic and value-added features that are excellent for most websites. However, their plans are not suited for beginners, and their support is lacking.
Crucial Hosting offers a variety of shared hosting plans with ample storage, unlimited bandwidth and solid basic features that include:
Also, Crucial Hosting allows for greater developmental freedom than other platforms. Their advanced features include:
You can check out their features page for a full list, but their platform is robust enough to handle most personal and business websites. They’ve clearly invested quite a bit into making sure their infrastructure is always on the cutting edge — in fact, they were one of the first hosting providers in the industry to offer virtualized servers, back when virtual servers were pretty much unheard of. The only real issue that I find with their platform is with their setup tools.
While they list themselves as compatible with platforms such as WordPress and Drupal, they don’t offer any form of auto-installer or website builder. This means that you’ll have to set up everything manually through the cPanel, which also makes this platform less than ideal for beginners. Experienced webmasters, however, will have few problems using this platform.
Crucial Hosting offers three Split-Shared hosting plans that offer the same features as listed earlier but with a few key differences. Check out the chart below for the particulars on each plan:
| Personal | Professional | Business | |
| Storage | 10GB | 75GB | 100GB |
| Memory | 256MB | 1024MB | 2048MB |
| Domains | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Subdomains | 0 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Dedicated IP? | No | Yes | Yes |
As you can tell, the Personal plan is at a bit of a disadvantage due to significantly lower memory allocations, only a single domain, and no subdomains. I like the resources provided on the Professional and Business plans, but note that you’re going to pay up a few times more for those resources.
Note that none of these plans come with a free domain, so you’ll pay for that annually in addition to your hosting. They do offer free SSL certificates, so the savings there will offset your domain purchase.
Also, if you’re on the Personal plan and decide you need a dedicated IP, you can purchase one at a monthly fee. This will still be cheaper than upgrading to the Professional plan. Finally, all plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee.
Crucial Hosting offers limited support options for customers. Your only options are submitting a ticket or looking up answers in the knowledge base, and the knowledge base is limited. Their phone line is only for pre-sales questions.
If you’re an experienced webmaster, Crucial Hosting offers reliable solutions for website hosting. All plans offer fantastic storage and solid features. Unfortunately, beginners will struggle as there are few entry-level tools available and support is lacking.
