To compare the best web hosts, we hosted the same WordPress website on each one and tested performance, customer service, and value for money. Check out the results here.
Israel-based Star Network LTD offers a variety of hosting plans to power its clients’ online presences. From shared web hosting and reseller hosting to VPS and dedicated servers, you can get it all from this company. You can even start your own radio station using one of the streaming radio services. That’s the good news.
This vendor’s website appears to be entirely WHMCS-powered, with no separate site for marketing its wares. As such, you can switch this shopping cart and support site into the usual 25+ languages, although (as I discovered) you may still need to instruct your browser to translate some of the Hebrew content into English.
One initial concern arises when you notice that the “latest tweet” on this company’s WHMCS home page is dated 2016, which indicates a lack of recent activity.
Features and Ease of Use
Star Network offers a total of 17 shared hosting plans: nine Linux, five Windows, and three e-commerce. These are complemented by 12 reseller plans (eight Linux and four Windows), two VPS, two cloud servers, and one dedicated server plan. With the Linux shared hosting plans, you’ll get:
- Three to unlimited domains
- 150 MB to 1000 MB disk space
- 10 GB to 100 GB bandwidth
- 10 to unlimited email accounts
It’s disappointing to see that it looks like you have to pay extra for some things you usually get for free with other hosts. I’m talking about the cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin control panels as well as the Softaculous and Installatron installers. Oh, and such extras as CloudLinux and Cloudflare. I might be wrong, and this might only apply to reseller plans, but — with only a “shopping cart” style website — it’s hard to tell exactly what is included with the regular hosting plans apart from the resource allocations.
As already hinted in my introduction, there is a streaming radio service (actually a reseller plan) for setting up a radio station, plus e-commerce hosting packages.
Pricing and Support
Star Network’s shared hosting plans are pricey at almost twice the industry average. You can pay on billing cycles from monthly to triennial, with discounts kicking in only for 2+ year commitments. There is no money-back guarantee as far as I can see.
Star Network’s contact options seem to be limited to ticket submission and an online contact form. Unfortunately, I couldn’t summon any pre-sales support. So, with such a bare-bones web presence, it’s surprising to see that Star Network has such a well-stocked knowledge base for self-support.
