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Hostwinds Review 2024

Hostwinds is a versatile hosting provider that offers a range of quality hosting services directed toward individuals, startups, and established businesses. The company boasts impressive server uptime reports, generous features, and a great customer support team. Customers who are interested in hosting and want to explore a variety of hosting services will find Hostwinds to be the ideal provider.

Hostwinds offers four main types of hosting services. Customers can choose from general hosting services like shared or business hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated hosting. Clients of all backgrounds are sure to find a plan that covers their needs at a reasonable price. Check out the various types of hosting services, the pros and cons, prices, and key features of each category below. 


Web Hosting

When people are interested in hosting their personal website or a small business website, most are looking for features like storage, dedicated IP, website builders, cPanels, and SSL certificates. Hostwinds offers those services plus much more through the various tiers and modes of hosting plans.

PROS
  • Nightly backups on all plans
  • 24/7 website monitoring and customer support
  • Unlimited bandwidth and storage
  • Weebly website builder
CONS
  • Basic plans are more expensive than competitors
Features
  • Automate ticket generation from web monitoring
  • Automatic data backups
  • Full management
  • Free website migration
  • cPanel
  • Easy drag-and-drop website builder
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Unlimited subdomains
  • Unlimited email accounts
  • Unlimited database
  • Unlimited storage

Shared Hosting — Best for individuals or small businesses

Shared Hosting is the perfect type of hosting for new website owners or small businesses who don’t need a lot of space or all the bells and whistles. Hardware is shared between clients meaning the hosting services are cheaper than what businesses or individuals pay for dedicated servers.

Business Hosting — Best for mid to large businesses and businesses expecting growth

Business Hosting plans are similar to shared hosting except that servers and space are much more controlled. Less sites are stored on servers to ensure business websites get the fastest loading times possible. Additionally, Business Hosting comes with more advanced features like Cloudflare CDN and optimized networking making it the ideal type of hosting for businesses who need to enhance their website’s performance.

Reseller Hosting — Best for those who want to sell Hostwinds hosting services

Reseller hosting is perfect for the tech-savvy who want to sell web hosting services with the Hostwinds name. By signing up for a Reseller hosting plan with Hostwinds, customers can sell the hosting services without having to worry about handling any of the server management issues. 

White Label Hosting — Best for those who want to sell Hostwinds products under their own brand name

Price Breakdown

As Hostwinds offers various types of web hosting in addition to various tiers in each type of hosting, there are countless pricing options for customers to choose from.

  • The Basic plan of Shared Hosting costs $5.24 per month for the first billing cycle which then raises to $6.99 per month.

  • The Basic Business Hosting plan starts at $8.99 per month and increases to $11.99 after the first billing cycle.

  • The Basic Reseller Hosting plan is priced the same as the Basic Shared Hosting plan—$5.24 for the first cycle and up to $6.99 thereafter.

  • White Label Hosting plans only have one price—a flat $10.00 per month.
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VPS Hosting

VPS, or virtual private server, hosting is a more reliable type of hosting that offers private resources on Hostwinds’ servers. This type of hosting is recognized as a more secure and better-performing option compared to shared hosting as clients have dedicated space on a server.

VPS hosting is often marketed to website owners—businesses or individuals—who experience medium web traffic but haven’t reached the point where they need the best performance possible.

Pros

  • Redundant network for optimal availability
  • Enterprise-level hardware
  • Instant scalability
  • Linux and Windows options

Cons

  • More expensive than shared or business hosting
  • More technical knowledge is required to get started

Features we love

  • Managed and unmanaged options for both Linux and Windows servers
  • Nightly backups
  • Server monitoring
  • Snapshots for backups
  • Firewall to secure servers
  • Volumes that can be added as you go for additional storage space
  • Load balancing for improved efficiency and uptime
  • Countless pre-configured applications supported

Linux Managed

Clients who want to host their website on a Linux server without having to perform server maintenance will find Hostwinds Linux Managed plans to be the perfect hosting option. Linux-managed plans support distributions like Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and Ubuntu.

Windows Managed

Clients who have projects based on the Windows operating system have the Windows Managed plan available. Websites can be hosted on Microsoft Windows Server 2012, 2016, or 2019.

Linux Unmanaged

Hostwinds provides unmanaged Linux plans for clients who are tech experts and want complete control over server configuration. The Linux Unmanaged plans don’t come with any server support, so these plans are only recommended to experienced professionals.

Windows Unmanaged

Similar to Linux Unmanaged plans, clients can opt for a Windows Unmanaged plan if they are experienced Windows Server users. Hostwinds maintains and supports power and networking but nothing beyond that. 

Price Breakdown

Prices vary greatly for each VPS plan depending on the desired number of CPUs and the amount of RAM, storage, and bandwidth necessary.

Linux plans are slightly more expensive compared to Windows plans as seen below.

  • Linux Managed plans start at $8.24 per month and incrementally raise to $395.24 per month.

  • Windows Managed plans start at $12.74 and go up to $431.24 per month.

  • Linux Unmanaged plans are cheaper with the range between $4.99 and $328.99 per month.

  • Similarly, Windows Unmanaged plans range from $10.99 to $376.99 per month.
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Cloud Servers

Besides physical servers and traditional web hosting services, Hostwinds also provides cloud servers. With cloud services, clients get flexibility, scalability, and great support from Hostwinds’ support team.

Pros

  • Full server management
  • High scalability
  • Dedicated resources for optimal performance

Cons

  • Hourly billing can obscure monthly prices

Features we love

  • No single point of failure
  • Nightly backups
  • Server monitoring
  • Enterprise-level hardware
  • Firewall
  • Numerous operating systems supported

Cloud Servers

Cloud servers are a great alternative solution to traditional web hosting for clients who want to have an easily scalable infrastructure. Hostwinds’ cloud servers provide dedicated resources, an enterprise firewall, and excellent uptime. 

Load Balancers

Load balancers can be added to existing projects to help improve performance and maintain uptime. Clients who have large amounts of traffic will find load balancers especially helpful as they manage incoming traffic to enhance responsiveness.  

Block Storage

Hostwinds provides Block Storage services for clients who want to upgrade their storage in a cost-effective and streamlined manner. Block Storage allows users to add volumes to cloud server plans to quickly increase storage.

Object Storage

Object Storage is similar to Block Storage in the sense that the service increases storage capacity. Cloud Server clients can utilize object storage to quickly and efficiently upgrade storage systems using uniquely identifiable objects.

Price Breakdown

Cloud Server plans vary greatly in price depending on the desired resources.

  • Plans start at $0.006931 per hour and go up to $0.456931 per hour.

  • Load balancers can be added to Hostwinds plans for a set fee of $10.00 per month.

  • Both Block Storage and Object Storage are paid for by gigabyte and by the hour—clients can expect to pay $0.000042386 per GB per hour.
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Dedicated Servers

Dedicated hosting plans are the top tier of all hosting plans as these plans provide private servers and resources to clients—no resources are shared with other clients. Hostwinds’ Dedicated plans are tailored toward website owners who experience large amounts of traffic and who need the best resources possible. 

What’s more, Dedicated hosting plans can be tailored to specific needs. Whether clients need support for Windows or Linux, whether they need 500 GB of SSD storage or 3 TB of HDD storage, Hostwinds has all the options.

Pros

  • Dedicated hardware and resources
  • Various data centers are available
  • Configurations are highly customizable
  • Fully managed

Cons

  • Significantly more expensive than other types of hosting plans
  • Not as scalable as cloud servers

Features we love

  • Various RAID configurations
  • Dedicated server monitoring
  • Dedicated resources
  • Nightly backups
  • Full server management
  • High-quality networking
  • Various operating systems supported
  • Various IP addresses

Price Breakdown

Hostwinds offers various types of servers which range greatly in price. What’s more, clients can upgrade base server offerings to increase RAM, add RAID, improve bandwidth, and add more IP addresses, all of which will affect the overall price.

Nonetheless, clients can expect to pay a minimum of $115.00 per month and may pay up to $288.00 per month without any upgraded resources.

Try Hostwinds Dedicated Servers(72-hour Full-Refund Policy)

Bottom Line: Great options for all users

Hostwinds is a high-quality web hosting provider that offers numerous options for all types of customers. New website owners will find that basic shared hosting covers all of their needs while large businesses with high traffic will find dedicated servers more than capable of handling their needs.