Features and Ease of Use
With HostIndia, you get everything you need to kickstart your website or deploy a web app. Here’s a sneak peak of the features included in every package:
- PHP, Perl, and CGI language support
- Super-easy Plesk control panel
- FTP access
- Web-based file manager
- 24/7 monitoring
HostIndia guarantees 99.5% uptime with their Linux shared hosting plans. This is slightly lower than the industry average, but still decent. Their VPS hosting plans come with a 99.9% uptime SLA.
Shared hosting customers have their pick of three Linux-based plans, which all come with a Plesk control panel installation. The basic package is the Silver Hosting Plan with 10 GB storage, a single MySQL database, and unmetered monthly traffic. Powered by the Plesk control panel, this plan is suitable for a single website.
Their Gold Hosting Plan gives you unlimited MySQL databases and subdomains. Strangely enough, you’re still limited to 10GB storage and one domain, but you do get to create 10 email addresses (capped at 1GB email storage space) with this plan.
Apparently they believe 10GB is the perfect number, because this is also what you get with their Secure Hosting Plan. You now have 100 email addresses and 5GB email storage, along with a dedicated static IP address and AlphaSSL certificate. They seem to have designed this plan for websites processing secure payment transactions, such as online stores.
All of their shared hosting plans limit you to a single website, which was rather disappointing. If you’d like to host multiple websites, you’ll have to opt for their VPS, cloud, or dedicated server hosting packages.
Pricing and Support
Compared to other Indian web hosts, I found their entry-level plan rather pricey — plus, you have to go for a five-year contract to get the rate advertised on their website, which seems like a pretty big commitment for the smaller businesses they market to. Then again, it also affords you much more space and bandwidth compared to most entry-level plans from other Indian web hosts. If you compare this plan with similar offerings from their competitors, the price isn’t so bad after all.
HostIndia includes a 30-day money back guarantee on all shared and VPS hosting plans. The refund for shared hosting is pretty standard, but having the same policy for VPS hosting was a nice (and rarely found) bonus.
HostIndia offers support through email, phone, and live chat. I had the pleasure of chatting with them about a technical issue, and I must say they were friendly and helpful. Support is available 24/7, but you will need to log in to your account to access most of these communication channels.
In addition, HostIndia has a good repository of self-help manuals, tutorials, and guides that cover the various aspects of web hosting.
