Founded in 2004, MXHost began with the simple idea of designing accessible yet customizable premium web hosting packages to cater to businesses of all sizes. This idea paid off: their varied portfolio now includes websites for news agencies, software developers, travel agencies, online publications, and e-commerce businesses. MXHost serves a customer base of over 27,000, including 570 reseller hosting companies. The Romanian web hosting company only serves customers in their native language of Romanian.
Features and Ease of Use
MXHost offers SSD shared hosting, VPS, WordPress-optimized hosting, reseller packages, and dedicated servers.
Their premium SSD shared hosting packages are especially popular with their clientele, since these aren’t your run-of-the-mill servers: they feature several performance-accelerating technologies, such as the LiteSpeed Web Server, CloudLinux for resource and account isolation, and a dedicated IP address (for Business SSD packages or better). All shared hosting accounts are guaranteed to have 99.9% uptime and come with a free website migration service.
You also get several value-added features, such as:
- Daily R1Soft backups
- Spam filters
- Multiple domain hosting (five for entry-level package, unlimited for others)
- Unlimited bandwidth with Business SSD package or better
- Free .ro or .eu domain registration with minimum annual contract
One thing I didn’t like about them, however: only their two highest-tier shared hosting packages include SSL certificates for your domains. Since Google announced that all websites without HTTPS and SSL protection would be marked “not secure” from mid-2018 onwards, this was rather disappointing to see – and seemed like an oversight considering their vision to craft “accessible” hosting packages.
Another aspect I didn’t like about MXHost: it seems that if you register a domain name with them, it’ll be listed under their company rather than your own name. This introduces a kink in the process should you ever wish to migrate off MXHost, or perhaps simply renew your domain with a different registrar. While not an impossible task, it may be extremely challenging for beginners.
Note also that other than their WordPress-optimized hosting packages that come with WordPress-specific support and tools, MXHost isn’t a particularly beginner-friendly web host. They have no one-click app installers, nor do they include a website builder with their packages.
Pricing and Support
MXHost definitely isn’t the cheapest web host in the market, though if you consider the fact that their entry-level package includes multiple-domain hosting, they’re not bad. The fact that they don’t include SSL certificates in their Personal or Business SSD shared hosting packages was a letdown, since this will incur extra costs and inconvenience for beginners starting out in the web hosting world. On the bright side, the free domain name registration included was a nice perk to see with their entry-level package, though it comes with the caveat mentioned above.
Sadly, MXHost doesn’t have any free trials, nor do they have a money back guarantee – so there’s no way to really try out the service before you commit to a package, all of which require a one-year commitment at minimum.
That being said, MXHost has built a solid track record of customer service since they started in 2004, although they did experience a few hiccups along the way. They remained responsive even when I reached out to them during unconventional hours, which is a positive indication for international customers.
They generally direct you to their knowledge base by default as this will cover the most common questions, but if this doesn’t adequately address your issues, you can always open a support ticket or call them via their Romanian support hotline (the latter is only available during extended business hours from Monday through Friday). I especially liked that they also offer you the option of remote support, which allows an operator to provide in-depth, step-by-step guidance through the help of TeamViewer.
