HOSTINZ was created in 2007 to provide website hosting services in New Zealand. Since 2014, it has also offered domain registration for .nz domains. Its services include cPanel web hosting, email hosting, VPS servers, and reseller web hosting.
At the time of writing this review, the new HOSTINZ website is “coming soon” (in 268 days time), so you are directed to the provider’s purchase and support portal instead.
Features and Ease of Use
Here is a quick summary of the general features you can expect to get with hosting from HOSTINZ:
- Daily backups
- Domain registration service
- Unlimited add-on domains
- GeoTrust SSL certificates
- Unmetered storage and bandwidth
Two of the significant features that HOSTINZ offers are the website builder and SiteLock security.
The website builder (at extra cost) is the popular Weebly that makes it easy to create anything from a blog to an e-commerce website. It has some handy SEO tools, too.
The SiteLock feature ensures you get the latest security features necessary to secure your online presence. It comes in three different plans, but once again, it isn’t part of your hosting package. You can decide which SiteLock package suits you, depending on the size of your site and how often you want it to be scanned. The SiteLock Trust Seal will be shown on your website (which should give your customers confidence), and you’ll also get improved site performance thanks to the CDN.
HOSTINZ also resells GeoTrust SSL certificates, so you can install one without interacting with GeoTrust itself. Once again, this service comes at a cost.
It looks like you get no uptime guarantee, but this may be merely a matter of it not being advertised because this provider’s new promotional website is not yet live.
Pricing and Support
There are three cPanel hosting packages: Lite, Advanced, and Pro. The Lite package provides 2 domains, 1 GB disk space, and 6 email accounts. The Advanced package offers 2 GB disk space and increases your add-on domains to 10, but you’d have to use the disk space sparingly to host ten sites. The Pro plan solves the storage problem by giving you unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and domains.
You do get a 14-day money-back guarantee with HOSTINZ, but it doesn’t cover domain purchases. And you might want to double-check with support before signing up since this is mentioned in the knowledge base but not in the terms-of-service.
For support, there is an adequate knowledge base and a ticket submission system. To be frank, I was surprised to receive a reply to my test ticket the same day (at the weekend):
That’s where the support provision ends as there are no additional advertised support channels like telephone or live chat. We might have to wait until the vendor’s new website goes live to see if they offer any additional support options.
