First Impression: Impressed!
I planned to host several personal websites on StableHost but before I signed up, I first went to chat with their sales rep Amy. I was surprised how fast and helpful her replies were. I asked about hosting plan details, resource limits and other related stuff and I was satisfied with all the answers I got. Even with all my (sometimes redundant) questions, she was never rude to me unlike some big hosts’ sales reps who seem so uninterested and just copy-paste knowledgebase links then leave the chat without saying anything else. Rating for pre-sales: A+!
So I then proceeded with the sign up process and immediately opened a ticket to get them move my whole cPanel account from another host. Tech support was very responsive and my sites were transferred within an hour of signing up! The site transfer was smooth — Mau (tech support) was very helpful throughout the whole process.
Everything went well until I was locked out of my cPanel account since I entered the wrong password too many times. I contacted support about this and they responded fast. Although we had a slight misunderstanding, eventually we were on the same page and the issue was resolved quickly.
Up until now the level of their service and support has been very consistent. Uptime and speeds have been great since day one. My sites have been down for a total of about 20 minutes in two months and I think that’s not bad at all. On top of that, the StableHost support team is always ready to help you with whatever issues you have with your hosting account. Their name StableHost definitely suits them — indeed, they offer stable hosting services!
Final Verdict
StableHost is an awesome host and I assure you that you’ll be in good hands if you do decide to sign up with them. I’m telling you, you won’t find a service this great for this cheap! Their basic package costs $3.95/month for 3gb of space (great for starter sites), and I personally believe this is a great bargain considering the quality of their service.
Another thing I’d like to highlight is StableHost’s support team. I feel like they’re always ready to help — they’ve been very helpful from the moment I signed up until now. They are very friendly and understanding as well so I don’t think newbies will have a difficult time communicating with the support reps.
With that said, StableHost is now one of the few select hosts which I’ll surely recommend to anyone who’s looking for a reliable web hosting company.
Things I Like:
– They’re transparent about your bandwidth and disk space limits.
– The pricing is fantastic. Really affordable for the value you get in return.
– They have shared, reseller and VPS hosting, with a plan suitable for pretty much everyone. You won’t pay for things you don’t need.
– Unlimited domains is standard with every plan.
– The Standard cPanel is used as the control panel, making it incredibly easy to use for beginners and old pros alike.
– Super fast ticket support (normally a response within 20 minutes for me) – and not just fast support, really helpful support.
– I believe the support is 100% U.S. based. If it’s not, it’s impossible to tell from the standpoint of a native English speaker.
– You can choose between a server in the U.S. or Europe, which is a great feature if you’re in SEO.
– My Uptime Test: 99.91%.
Things I Hate:
– No prorated refunds. This is a terrible policy; if customers cancel early and take their sites off your servers, don’t charge them for months they don’t use!
– No chat support. Not a big deal because chat support is normally terrible, but this is one place they could step up and “wow” me.
– The phone support is only for sales; any billing or technical support must be handled with a ticket.I’ve tried to call and both times I was put on hold for about two minutes, then told that no one was available to chat and given the option of leaving a voicemail. My suggestion? Don’t even bother with their phone support and just submit a ticket. The help you get will more than suffice.
– My uptime last year while monitoring was just 99.59%. This is not nearly good enough – but they did credit me with a free month of hosting when I brought it up with them, and since then their uptime has been great.
Average Server Response Time: 1022 ms. This is just average.