Founded in 2010, Hub Host is a shared web hosting and website services provider based out of South Africa. Although first and foremost a provider of shared web hosting packages, they also provide a wide range of related services such as managed hosting services, reseller services, web design, online marketing, and SEO. They have completed more than 125 projects for their customers, and they operate in English.
Features and Ease of Use
Hub Host provides a relatively run-of-the-mill shared web hosting service that provides all the essential web hosting features:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Bi-weekly backups via the cPanel dashboard (purchased separately)
- Full domain registration, and a free .co.za domain with annual billing
- 1 to 20 or unlimited addon domains
- Purchasable third-party SSL certificates from a number of providers
- Upwards of 10 GB bandwidth with some unlimited options
- 1 to 20 GB of storage space (no unlimited options)
Probably the most interesting thing about Hub Host is their professional website design and maintenance packages. They will make a website for you and then host it for a low monthly fee, with the price depending on the number of pages and forms you want. You are entitled to three rounds of reviews, and the website will be developed in WordPress so you can easily maintain it yourself after their handover.
With their reseller packages, Hub Host provides unlimited email accounts, FTP accounts, MySQL databases, as well as subdomains, parked domains, and addon domains. They provide a good range of licenses and third-party software (some of which you have to buy) including the cPanel control panel for all plans and WHM for the reseller packages. You can also purchase extra IP addresses, SSL certificates (from Comodo, RapidSSL, GeoTrust), SpamExperts email security, eBranding for your email campaigns, and MailVault for archiving.
They don’t provide any info on their data center facilities.
Pricing and Support
Hub Host only provides shared web hosting packages, which makes their pricing quite simple. Their seven standard web hosting options aren’t among the cheapest compared with international providers (e.g. in India) but are quite inexpensive for the South African market. The resources you get make these packages suitable for anything from a personal blog to a very large business website.
Unfortunately, all plans have a one-off setup fee, but it’s only about the same as the monthly cost of the lower plans, so it’s not too bad. As I mentioned earlier, they provide a cPanel license with all plans, and some plans also include WHM, which makes them ideal for reselling. There are a few options that offer unlimited bandwidth. However, be cautious of the extra expenses such as anti-spam and mail security, SSL certificates, and weekly backups, as they can quickly increase the monthly prices.
Also as already mentioned, this provider offers combined web design and hosting packages. You pay a one-off fee (70% deposit and 30% once it’s completed) to have a website made for you, then they host the website for a modest monthly fee.
Depending on the package, you can choose between monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual billing, with only annual billing qualifying for a free domain.
You can contact Hub Host by email, ticket, and a South Africa telephone number. Although the support is advertised as 24/7, it can take up to a day to get a reply, and you might be passed around the pleasant staff a few times before you get the answer to your question. If this is not good enough, you can purchase monthly maintenance support with SLA-backed services that bring response times down to under an hour and also include professional SEO and other services. If you prefer to support yourself, you will be disappointed to find that the knowledge base is very incomplete.
