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.
Dch has been providing Chilean-based hosting since 1999. It has its servers colocated in a Tier III data center in Santiago, Chile, and the website is only available in Spanish.
Features and Ease of Use
There are a range of hosting services provided, however, the standard shared hosting plans come with the following core features:
- 99.7% uptime guarantee
- Weekly backups for disaster restoration
- Domain registration for .cl available
- Up to 6GB disk space
- From 10GB to unlimited bandwidth limits
Dch co-locates its servers in one Gtd Group’s data centers in the Santiago,Chile. While its not owned and operated by Dch, which is always preferable, you can take comfort in the fact it’s certified Tier III by the Uptime institute, meaning less than 1.6 hours of downtime per year. Oddly, it doesn’t use SSD storage, and still relies on the far slower HDD.
There’s no uptime guarantee on the website, though Dch advertises a 100% uptime in the last 12 months and an uptime of 99.99% availability for its infrastructure. I checked in with support, and they confirmed that 99.7% uptime is guaranteed (which is lower than the industry standard, 99.9%).
In terms of shared hosting plans, there are eight Linux plans, which support PHP, CGI, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin, and five ASP plans, which support ASP, ASP.NET (v4.5), and Microsoft SQL.
The rest of the inclusions are quite similar. All plans come with cPanel (an easy to use and trusted control panel), FTP access, and some fairly standard security measures e.g., AntiVirus and Firewall.
There is no website building tool or one-click installer (I checked with support), though SSL certificates and Cron jobs are supported, even though neither are advertised on the website. If you need remote MySQL connections or SSH access, you need the VPS or dedicated server plans.
Pricing and Support
The prices start quite affordably and in line with local and international competitors, however, the higher-tier packages are pricey. At odds, the features remain the same throughout the plans, with only the resource allocations increasing with the price.
If your website requires only 1 GB disk space and 10GB monthly transfer, you have the option to select the lowest package, which offers a great price and provides all the same features as the top-tier plans, albeit in smaller quantities.
Dch registers domains (only .cl extension), however, it’s an added extra cost, and after checking with support, I can confirm that SSL certificates are provided. Unlike lots of similar companies, Dch does not overwhelm you with add-ons in the checkout flow.
Unfortunately, the link to the contact page was giving me a 403 error, but luckily, the company’s phone and email address is clearly advertised on the website, so I could contact the team that way. There’s also live chat, although it was offline when I visited the site (it was before its usual business hours in the morning).
General support is available from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and in the event of an emergency, you can contact the team 24/7. I’ve contacted them via the offline live chat window and received a response answering my question in full (and in English) within a few hours.
