HQhost has been in business since 2001 and currently has more than 30 employees. It claims some of its customers have been with the company since its inception. I can’t confirm this, either way, however, I can dig into the English language website to see if it’s a good option for your hosting needs.
Features and Ease of Use
HQhost offers a range of hosting services, including shared hosting plans, which come with the following core features:
- 100% uptime guarantee
- Weekly automatic backups
- Domain registration available
- Up to unlimited add-on domains
- Up to 20GB disk space
- Up to unlimited data transfer per month
HQhost has its servers co-located in a Tier III data center in Clifton, New Jersey, just a short distance outside of New York. The routers are robust Cisco and the network is based on the BGP4 protocol in order to provide low latency and reliability.
Other branded equipment includes Dell Racks, Cisco switches, and Supermicro servers. It’s also good to see the ten times as fast SSD storage is used, as opposed to older and slower HDD.
There’s a 100% uptime guarantee advertised, although it’s less clear what the actual compensation is in the event of excessive downtime. Also, backups are only taken on a weekly basis, which may or may not be enough for your needs.
The plans come with one-click support for popular CMS programs like WordPress and Joomla!, although it’s less clear from the website if there’s a website building tool (there isn’t one advertised).
Pricing and Support
Unless you opt for an unlimited plan, the prices are all quite affordable. Also, unless you want more than three domains, you can easily get by with one of the two base plans, which are very cheap. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans.
To sign up, you initially need to complete a brief online form. The form can be a bit buggy, but I managed to successfully go through it. Once you finish, you gain access to a dashboard where you can purchase hosting on a monthly basis.
Customer service is available by phone, Skype, email, and online contact form. There isn’t live chat or a knowledge base, but according to the website, support is available 24/7.
I did send the team an email around lunchtime on a weekday and I received a reply in full on the same business day. The team were helpful and polite.
