RuralServer is an Indian provider offering a wide variety of shared hosting products along with VPS and dedicated server solutions. Their Windows and Linux shared hosting products offer excellent features and value, but their WordPress hosting is actually a better overall value. The company was founded in 2001 and operates out of Tier III data centers.
Features and Ease of Use
RuralServer offers a wide variety of shared website hosting plans. You can choose either Linux and Windows shared hosting with excellent features and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Here are some of the basic features included with all accounts:
- Unlimited storage (except Basic plan)
- Unlimited bandwidth
- SSD database storage
- Antispam and antivirus protection
- Softaculous auto-installer with 300+ applications available
- Free SSL certificates
These plans also support a wide variety of developer options and feature strong security such as leech protection. Their advanced options and security features include:
- DDoS attack protection
- Daily backups
- PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails support
- Hotlink & leech protection
- phpMyAdmin access
In addition to the features listed above, RuralServer’s plans also offer SSH access along with health check and monitoring tools such as the MySQL Command-Line. On top of that, you get Engintron to help improve web server performance and reduce CPU and RAM loads.
Their standard Linux and Windows shared hosting plans don’t seem to offer a website builder, but they do have a Student Hosting plan (for students and teachers) that includes the tool for free, so you may want to enquire if you can access the website builder with a regular shared hosting plan. Additionally, beginners can use the Softaculous auto-installer to add WordPress or a wide variety of CMSes to their websites. You can also use FTP and cPanel to upload files to your server.
Pricing and Support
RuralServer offers multiple options for shared website hosting with both Linux and Windows operating systems available. Here a quick breakdown of those plans.
| Basic | Premium | Unlimited | |
| Domains | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Subdomains | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 5GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email Accounts | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| FTP Accounts | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
These features and prices are the same regardless of which operating system you pick. Windows hosting plans come with the Plesk control panel, while the Linux plans come with cPanel. All plans offer excellent storage and features and some of the best pricing you’ll find from a web hosting provider. On top of that, they come with a 30-day money back guarantee so you can try out their service risk-free.
Now if you prefer WordPress hosting, RuralServer offers that as well. Here’s a breakdown of those plans.
| Basic | Premium | Unlimited | |
| Domains | 1 | 5 | 10 |
| Subdomains | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 100GB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email Accounts | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| FTP Accounts | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 1TB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
This is one of the few times I’d recommend WordPress hosting over their standard hosting. If you already know you want to run the popular CMS on your website, these plans offer outstanding features and are actually cheaper than standard hosting. The Basic plan is an exceptional value for single domain hosting.
Alternatively, if you’re a student or a teacher who only requires a very basic personal website, such as a blog or resume website, check out their Student hosting plans. These plans are so named more for the contract lengths rather than the features you get:
| Monthly | Annually | Biennially | |
| Domains | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bandwidth | 5GB | 5GB | 5GB |
| Storage | 5GB | 5GB | 5GB |
| Email Accounts | 1 | 1 | 1 |
You will find that these plans are some of the most affordable options available, but they do come with significant limitations. For instance, the Monthly plan does not include database support, and standard cPanel access is not provided. However, if you’re looking to get a basic website up and running for a year at an incredibly low price, these plans can fulfill that need.
RuralServer offers decent customer support with telephone support, live chat, and online ticket support. Live chat is only available during business hours, so if you need assistance outside of those hours, you’ll have to submit a ticket instead. In my experience, support was always responsive and generally got back to me within a couple hours. They also have a fairly decent knowledge base, though it took some digging to find this: their links don’t seem to be well-organized.
