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.
Features and Ease of Use
Crucial Hosting offers a variety of shared hosting plans with ample storage, unlimited bandwidth and solid basic features that include:
- Enterprise Intel SSD storage
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates
Also, Crucial Hosting allows for greater developmental freedom than other platforms. Their advanced features include:
- CloudLinux to isolate resources for each client
- LiteSpeed Web Server for faster server performance
- Supports Python, Perl 5.8, PHP 5.2 through 7.x
- Automatic daily backups kept for up to 30 days
- Software firewall
- Cron jobs supported
- DNS zone editing
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.
Pricing and Support
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.
How much does Crucial Web Hosting cost?Crucial Web Hosting offers plans from $10 to $100. The price depends on which type of hosting plan you choose. You can see the updated pricing table (updated weekly) below.
Which Crucial Web Hosting plan should I get?My recommendation is to start with a cheaper plan. You can always upgrade later on. Crucial Web Hosting can help you with the migration to a more expensive plan. The increase in visitors many times takes longer than expected and you shouldn’t pay a lot of money until the need arises. Of course, your needs may vary, and you can consult with a hosting expert from Crucial Web Hosting here.
How good is Crucial Web Hosting’s customer support?Crucial Web Hosting is not ranked as one of our top web hosts. But that can also be a result of Crucial Web Hosting being a small, under the radar, hosting provider. There are advantages to a small hosting company – as a customer, you are more important to them. You can also check out our comparison of the most popular web hosting services here.
