European company Hostplay was launched in 2004 to provide quality, reliable, and affordable web hosting and web development services to personal and business customers. Their servers located in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Sweden, and Russia cater for thousands of customers around the world.
Features and Ease of Use
Hostplay offers semi-dedicated, Virtual Private Server (VPS), and dedicated hosting servers. Their web hosting plans come with above-average features suited to intermediate and expert website developers.
Businesses or individuals hoping to grow an online presence will enjoy these value-added benefits:
- 99.9% uptime
- Minimum of 30GB SSD storage
- From 600 GB to 1500 GB premium bandwidth
- Free Comodo SSL with an option to purchase RapidSSL
- Paid extra dedicated IP across all plans
Hosting packages start with 30 GB SSD storage and a bandwidth of 600 GB on semi-dedicated servers. The dedicated server plan comes with 8 GB DDR3 RAM and 15 TB of bandwidth. Several front-page extensions and performance technologies such as the Ioncube loader are employed for improved speed and performance.
Beginners may find Hostplay challenging since there is no free website builder or CMS on the semi-dedicated plan. Although Softaculous and DirectAdmin are provided on the VPS and dedicated server plans, you have to pay a fee to use a website builder.
Hostplay offers automatic weekly backups for semi-dedicated servers. Backups on the VPS and dedicated servers work differently, and you would have to configure backups from cPanel. While this great initiative allows customers to set the backups as they prefer, it requires a basic knowledge of web hosting.
One thing I particularly like about Hostplay is the free Comodo SSL provided on every plan. It is attached to one domain or subdomain. There’s also the option of purchasing RapidSSL if you prefer.
Another Hostplay plus is easy migration from another web host provider since they handle the entire migration process for you.
Hostplay only sells web hosting and business products such as SSL certificates. It is not a domain provider, which might be disconcerting to customers who don’t know how to hook up to a domain provided by another provider.
Pricing and Support
Hostplay is one of the cheapest web hosts on the market, and they compete favorably in terms of quality of service. Regardless of the hosting plan you choose, you can purchase additional resources such as extra disk space, dedicated IP, RAM, and bandwidth without having to upgrade your server.
While the seven-day money-back guarantee is less than the 30 days offered by many other web hosts, Hostplay does at least give you a week to work out if it’s the one for you.
Concerning customer support, I have nothing bad to report. I received a fast and appropriate response when I contacted them by web chat, and I’ve found the knowledge base to be comprehensive. Email and phone support are also available.
