Greek-based Pointer Hosting Experts has been providing web hosting services since 2002. In addition to shared hosting, they offer cloud servers and VPS solutions to fit pretty much any type of personal or business website. Pointer offers both Windows and Linux shared hosting with solid features and a platform that’s great for both beginners and experienced webmasters.
Features and Ease of Use
Pointer offers you the ability to choose either Windows or Linux-based shared hosting and makes it easy for webmasters of all experience levels to create a website. Below are some of the basic features you’ll find with Pointer plans:
- Weebly website builder and one-click auto-installer
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Daily backups with 14 days data retention
- Firewall protection
- Cloud infrastructure
- Data center located in Greece
With cloud hosting, you won’t have to worry about outages as often as there are built-in redundancies. If one server goes out, other servers pick up the slack. In addition to the basic features, you get the following value-added features with Pointer:
- Free SSL certificates
- 100% hardware uptime
- 99.99% network uptime guarantee – with a full month’s worth of hosting fees refunded if they don’t meet this standard
- Unlimited subdomains
Every plan also comes with €75 in Google AdWords credits, which is a great way to promote your new site. Unfortunately, these shared hosting plans don’t offer support for advanced coding such as Python, Perl, ASP, Ruby on Rails, and other scripting languages.
This platform is great for beginners and experienced webmasters alike. Their Linux plans offer a Weebly website builder for beginners, while both the Linux and Windows-based plans include a one-click auto-installer for WordPress, Joomla!, and hundreds of other apps (only for Bronze hosting packages or better). Standard cPanel (or Plesk for Windows) access is also available, along with FTP access.
Pricing and Support
Pointer offers four shared hosting plans. Below is a rundown of the differences in each plan:
| Basic | Bronze | Silver | Unlimited | |
| SSD Storage | 500MB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Domains | 1 | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| FTP Accounts | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email Accounts | 5 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| One Click Installer? | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MySQL Databases | No | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
As you can see, the Basic plan is very limited in scope. The lack of database support explains why the one-click installer isn’t offered, as many apps such as WordPress require at least one database. Bronze is your best option for single domain hosting, as this is priced only slightly higher than Basic and offers far more functionality.
One advantage of going with this provider over some others is that you get free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates on all websites. However, this provider doesn’t offer free domains, so you’ll have to pay for that in addition to hosting.
One aspect I was impressed by was that they offer an industry-leading 60-day money back guarantee on their shared hosting plans. Considering the significant discounts available on longer contracts, Pointer Hosting Experts is definitely worth considering.
Pointer support is somewhat average, with only ticket support and a telephone hotline available. They cite live chat as one of their available channels, but this was nowhere to be found on their website — it may only be available upon logging in to your client portal. Unfortunately, live chat is not 24/7, and they do not list hours of operation. There’s also a knowledge base, but only with a handful of topics and answers available. Note that the website is in Greek, so have Google Translate handy when using their support site.
