drServer is an American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) member and RIPE Local Internet Registry member. It was established in 2009, and today it offers shared web hosting, reseller hosting, email hosting, KVM VPS, and dedicated servers, plus domain registration and SSL certificates.
drServer’s main website is in English, but its client area can be switched into English, Chinese, Farsi, German, Indonesian, or Portuguese.
Features and Ease of Use
drServer offers four shared hosting plans, four reseller hosting plans, three email hosting plans, four VPS plans, and eleven dedicated servers (with only two available for purchase at the time of this review). The four shared hosting plans provide you with:
- Free domain/transfer (with an annual premium plan)
- cPanel control panel
- 5 GB to 150 GB SSD disk space
- 50 GB to 1 TB premium multi-homed bandwidth
- Unlimited email and FTP accounts
- Hardware RAID 10 with battery backup unit
- Automated incremental backups
- PHP version selector
- Python, Node.js, and Ruby support
The Softaculous auto-installer allows you to install a plethora of popular CMS and other applications, so you can populate your website with content without having to be a web designer or developer.
Once your website is up-and-running, you’ll want to be sure you can recover it if anything adverse happens, which is why drServer uses JetBackup to back up your website regularly. The chances of anything adverse actually happening are reduced, thanks to the use of SSD storage (which is more reliable than traditional HDD storage) in a RAID 10 configuration (which uses replication to guard against potential disk data disasters).
Virtual servers use KVM virtualization so that you can install any operating system. You can run Windows or even customize the kernel.
Dedicated servers come with an automated control panel that lets you manage all aspects of your server: reinstalling, starting, stopping, shutting down, or mounting an ISO image.
drServer doesn’t oversell its servers. It offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is only average for the industry but which pays out monthly credits when the specified uptime isn’t achieved.
Pricing and Support
drServer’s shared hosting plans are competitively priced. You can pay for them using U.S. dollars, on monthly or annual billing cycles (with nothing in between), by BitPay or PayPal. First-time managed shared and reseller hosting solutions come with an unconditional 90-day money-back guarantee, whereas VPS and OnApp Cloud services come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Support can be summoned via support ticket or live chat. While my first attempt wasn’t as smooth as I would like, I subsequently got answers to a lot of questions via the live chat channel:
Although drServer’s blog or knowledge base is available for self-support, you might be disappointed to discover that there is nothing posted under the “Web Hosting” heading.
