HostArmada Review

Reliability

Server reliability is one of the most important factors website owners should consider when choosing a hosting provider. Website owners need their websites to be available 24/7 for their websites’ SEO rating and so customers can access their sites whenever they want.

HostArmada offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee on all its hosting services. While HostArmada does not offer a status page that tracks downtime, the company does inform all its clients if any incidents should arise. What’s more, HostArmada employs a team of technical support who monitor HostArmada’s infrastructure 24/7/365. As such, if there is any event leading to downtime, the team is quick to remedy the situation.

With HostArmada’s 99.9% uptime guarantee, the company is willing to compensate clients for the additional downtime. All things considered, HostArmada is a reliable and stable hosting provider that is willing to back up its claims and support clients if any irregular issues occur.

Security

Websites need to have top-class security to protect their proprietary information and to protect any information coming from website users. HostArmada offers such strong security to its clients thanks to various components and protocols. HostArmada divides its security into two key sections—web server security fleet and environment security fleet. Each section does a specific job to ensure websites are covered back to front.

HostArmada utilizes security features such as connection level limits, requests checking service, web application firewall, static files checking, and a DDoS protection service to ensure web servers are kept safe. For web hosting environment security—where website files are stored—, HostArmada uses an advanced network firewall and WAF, live security events monitoring, intrusion detection and prevention system, malware scanning, Zero-day attack detection, and OS patch management.

The bottom line is that HostArmada manages security well. All web hosting plans receive free daily backups, SSL certificates, free DDoS protection, malware scanning and removal, network and WAF firewall, and custom-made defense mechanisms to protect web servers.

Performance

A website’s performance is often a key indicator of how successful the website will be as it plays an important role in user experience. Users don’t want to purchase a product, read news, or browse services on a website that’s slow to load and react. That’s why websites need a web hosting provider that can provide consistent and fast speeds.

HostArmada provides data centers in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, India, Singapore, and Australia. The selection of data centers around the globe ensures that website visitors from any geographical location will receive consistent performance. Website owners interested in learning about the performance of HostArmada’s data centers can visit their data center page to download and view tests performed on the various locations. From the tests that we’ve run at HostingCanada, HostArmada’s Canadian servers provide ping times around 85ms—average for hosting providers.  

Besides the data centers, HostArmada uses Linux-based servers and the AlmaLinux operating system for its infrastructure. It also uses some of the top brands in the software and hardware industry for its servers such as AMD EPYC, LiteSpeed, Cloudflare, and CloudLinux OS.

Pricing

HostArmada offers various hosting services with different pricing tiers. The company also offers various billing periods from monthly payments to triennial plans.

For website owners who are new to their field and are looking for a quick and cheap way to get a website online, HostArmada offers an introductory plan of shared hosting for only $2.99 per month for a triennial plan. This basic plan only covers one website and has limited features. For more premium features in a shared hosting plan, clients can expect to pay $5.39 for a triennial plan. Monthly and annual plans are slightly more expensive.

Clients who are more established, such as website owners who experience high traffic, may opt for VPS or dedicated CPU hosting. VPS hosting costs a minimum of $41.21 per month and can go up to $63.71 per month depending on the desired tier. Dedicated CPU hosting starts at $111.75 per month and increases to $246.75 per month. Both VPS and dedicated CPU hosting only have monthly billing options.

HostArmada also offers reseller hosting with two tiers—the basic tier costs $19.09 per month, and the premium tier costs $25.47 per month. Reseller hosting has options for biennial, annual, semi-annual, and monthly billing periods.

While HostArmada offers competitive prices for all its plans and services, the company does have high renewal costs. Customers who want to renew a plan will have to pay up to three times more than what they initially paid.

However, this year's Summer Deals at HostArmada can get you 75% off any Shared and WordPress hosting options, 30% off dedicated CPU and VPS hosting, and 25% off Reseller hosting.

Ease of Use

The ease of use of website hosting comes down to how easy it is to set up an account, get a website online and active, and what kind of control panel is used. HostArmada has streamlined the account setup through intuitive design and workflows to ensure users can get started hosting their website with minimal fuss and time.

The company utilizes cPanel as the main dashboard for web hosting and server configurations. cPanel is a widely used control panel that is rich in features and intuitive to use. As it’s a commonly used tool among hosting providers, website owners have likely been exposed to cPanel previously.

HostArmada also uses the Softaculous integration within cPanel for the one-click installation of hundreds of applications. Users can download and install WordPress and WordPress themes seamlessly. What’s more, the cPanel allows website owners to quickly check on website statistics, view visitor metrics, and manage files.  

HostArmada provides users with a generous 45-day money-back guarantee for all plans except those billed monthly. The 45 days gives clients enough time to test out HostArmada’s services with the assurance that if the service doesn’t meet expectations, clients won’t lose any money.

CMS/WP Installation/Website Builder

As mentioned, HostArmada provides clients with the well-known cPanel for site and server management. With the cPanel, website owners can find HostArmada’s website builder complete with professional themes, third-party website builders, and other tools available for download.

The cPanel also comes with a Softaculous integration for easy installation of hundreds of applications. Using Softaculous, users can download WordPress and WordPress themes, or they can choose from one of the other CMSs. The screenshot below shows Softaculous App Installer and the included WordPress support.

Support

HostArmada has put a lot of work into its customer support to make it responsive and helpful. The company has four channels by which clients can get help from staff 24/7/365— live chat, phone, email, and a ticketing system. Customer support is quick to reply, knowledgeable about their products, and upfront about solutions and issues.

As mentioned previously, HostArmada employs a team of technical experts who monitor servers and infrastructure to quickly fix any issues should they happen. Along with customer support monitoring phones, emails, and chat 24/7, the technical support staff works around the clock to mitigate issues as soon as they arise.

Beyond the support staff and modes of communication, HostArmada also provides clients with an extensive library of resources. The company has created a large knowledge base full of articles that cover topics from billing to emails to SSL and security issues. What’s more, HostArmada also has a large stock of tutorials related to cPanel, WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, and more.

Additional Considerations

HostArmada has designed its hosting services to follow a pattern of basic features with upgrades corresponding to an increase in the tier or a more advanced service like VPS or dedicated CPU hosting. The most basic hosting service offered, cloud shared hosting, offers support for one domain name and includes 15 GB of storage, 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, a free SSL certificate, 7 daily backups, malware scans, and removals, cPanel, a WAF &IP firewall. Moving up to more premium tiers, plans see increases in features such as support on unlimited websites, 40 GB of storage, 6 CPU cores, and 6 GB of RAM.

VPS and dedicated CPU hosting see basic plans starting at 50 GB of storage, 1 CPU core, 2 GB of RAM, 2 TB of bandwidth, 40 Gbps speed in, and 2000 Mbps speed out. These plans can be upgraded further by choosing a more premium tier or by requesting improved specs directly with HostArmada.

Beyond the flexible features, HostArmada offers features like unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, free website transfers, DNS management, website consultations, and more. HostArmada’s servers also support PHP version manager, Python, Perl, SSH/Bash access, Git, Node.js, Drush, WP CLI, and various PHP frameworks.

The Bottom Line

Since launching in 2019, HostArmada continues to provide plenty of features and strengths to compete in the web hosting field. The company has a great customer support team, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a 45-day money-back guarantee, and hosting services and plans to meet the needs of a diverse customer base.