Hostens is a long-standing hosting provider with its own Tier III data center in Lithuania. There’s no website building tool, but there is everything else you need, including superior customer service.
Hostens is fine, but fine is not good enough. While Hostens is a decent web host, you can get better quality hosting at a cheaper price with Hostinger, for example.
Founded in 2003, Hostens is a website hosting company based in Lithuania. It’s part of the much larger Interneto Vizija, which has more than 100,000 customers across Europe. Hostens owns and operates its own Tier III data center, and its modern website is available in English, Estonian, Latvian, Russian, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese.
Features and Ease of Use
Hostens is a full service hosting provider that offers shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS plans, and domain registration. The shared hosting plans come with the following features:
99.95% uptime guarantee
Daily and weekly automatic backups
Domain registration available
Up to 100 websites
Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
Up to 60 GB disk space
Up to 4 TB monthly bandwidth
Hostens owns and operates its own data center, which is located in Vilnius, Lithuania. The center looks immaculate, and it is built to Tier III specifications, meaning less than 1.6 hours of downtime per year. Note, however, that this vendor’s 99.95% uptime guarantee falls short of the Tier III 99.982% target.
Since Hosten’s own website is so easy to use, I’m surprised there is no website builder that would allow this company’s customers to easily achieve the same thing, but customer services confirmed to me that this feature would be “coming soon.” But beginners will be happy to see the Installatron one-click installer that helps you install popular programs with no technical expertise.
There are plenty of features for experts since all plans come with the PHP, Python and Ruby programming languages. You also get MySQL databases with remote connections and the phpMyAdmin management tool. Unusually for shared plans, you can even schedule Cron jobs and get SSH access.
Hosting plans use SSD storage (for faster read/write speeds) and CloudLinux (which isolates you from noisy neighbors in a shared hosting environment).
Pricing and Support
Hosten’s hosting plans are good value for money, especially for a provider with its own Tier III data center. Domain names cost extra, but – hey! – you can’t have everything, and you do get a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for free.
Hosting plans can be purchased on three, six, twelve, and twenty-four-month terms, with a deep discount when you purchase a longer term up front. There’s also a generous 30-day free trial that allows you to try before you buy.
You can access 24/7 support via live chat, email, or ticket, and there’s also a substantial knowledge base on the Hostens website. When I contacted the support team early one weekday morning, the operator picked up immediately and answered my questions politely in English.
How much does HOSTENS cost?
HOSTENS offers plans from $1 to $3. The price depends on which type of hosting plan you choose. You can see the updated pricing table (updated weekly) below.
Which HOSTENS plan should I get?
My recommendation is to start with a cheaper plan. You can always upgrade later on. HOSTENS 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 HOSTENS here.
How good is HOSTENS’s customer support?
HOSTENS is not ranked as one of our top web hosts. But that can also be a result of HOSTENS 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.
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Bottom line on HOSTENS
Hostens enjoys more than 100 positive reviews on Trustpilot. Its SSD-based shared hosting plans with a 99.95% uptime guarantee could only be improved by the addition of a website building tool (which is on the way).
Still not sure if this is the right web host for you? Check out our top recommended web hosts to learn more.
Pros
The plans are good value for money
Customer service by live chat was excellent
99.95% uptime guarantee on all plans
An owned Tier III data center
Cons
No website building tool
A few negative online reviews
Mark Holden
Mark is a full stack web developer specializing in HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP. When he's not busy building websites or geeking out over the latest addition to his ever-growing gadget collection, he enjoys playing drums for his progressive rock band. He can also make a mean Spanish omelet.
