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HostPapa Review: Is This Host any Good?

Introduction

In this article we’ll be doing a full HostPapa review. While the signup process with any company is simple, picking a host for your site is not an easy decision to make. Choosing a poor hosting provider is one of those decisions that seem insignificant at first, but can later turn out into a disaster.

What’s strange about hosting is that you don’t notice it that much if it’s good. That’s because your site just works the way it’s supposed to. But, if you make a bad choice, you will open a Pandora’s box. One problem will start following another, putting your whole site at risk.

In this article, we will do a full HostPapa review. HostPapa is a hosting company you may or may not heard of. You will learn more about this provider, which will give you enough information to decide if it’s the right choice for your site. Let’s begin our HostPapa review.

What Is HostPapa?

HostPapa is an independently owned hosting provider, founded in 2006 by Jamie Opalchuk. In their 13 years of existence, they gathered a tribe of a little over 500k users.

That means they’re an older hosting providers, and they are certainly one of the bigger ones. But, 13 years of experience combined with half a million users says HostPapa is here to stay.
We mentioned that they are independent. We (and most users and tech-geeks) like when hosting company is privately owned, and not a part of a bigger network.

Smaller companies are less likely to outsource their support and are more likely to do things in-house. That means better support, and staying closer to customers. This is always a plus.

HostPapa takes this even further, they are not your average host. Their idea is to give you all the tools in one place that will support the online presence of your business. With that in mind, each HostPapa user has their own account manager. An account manager is a person who is in charge, recommending the best products and trying to ease the process of getting used to the new environment.

Speaking of the environment, it is worth noting that HostPapa cares about our planet too. They were among the first ones in the hosting industry to introduce green technologies to their systems. If you’re interested in others doing this check out my GreenGeeks review.

That tells a lot about their ethics. The hosting industry is one of the bigger polluters, producing more emissions than airlines.

While being green won’t influence your website, it is still a very positive thing. We applaud HostPapa for powering their data centers from renewable sources.

HostPapa Plans & Prices

HostPapa General Features

We will talk about each hosting type separately. First, let’s cover some of the general characteristics of HostPapa hosting, as a whole.

Ease of Use
HostPapa aims to make things simple for you. Their primary customer focus is small business owners. In particular, they focus on those who don’t want to bother with maintaining their website non-stop.
Everything is simple with them, from sign-up to the website setup. You will get a free site migration. This means you don’t have to bother with transferring the site to their servers.

If you choose one of their managed plans (our recommendation is WordPress managed hosting), you will have even more freedom. You will not need to think about your site, apart from updating its content.
Also, if you want to start a new website from scratch, HostPapa has a dedicated website builder.

This easy to use builder is a very convenient way of building site in no time. It’s expensive, but you must consider the costs associated with hiring a developer. When taking this into consider, it’s probably worth the money. Below are the website builder prices.

Terrific Security Measures
Every website is vulnerable. For that reason, it is a good idea to choose a hosting provider that takes care of the security at the server level. There are many things you can do yourself to make browsing your site safer. A simple suggestion would be to use security plugins.

HostPapa has excellent security measures even on their cheaper plans. Their servers have anti-spam, firewall, but also intrusion detection. This is exceptional for those of you interested in HostPapa. Many other of their competitors include advanced security only at higher-cost plans.

HostPapa also runs automatic backups, which is terrific. What that means is if a disaster strikes and your site goes down for whatever reason, you’re okay. All you need to do is restore a previously created backup. It’s a straightforward process, and your site will be only a few clicks away from working as usual.

HostPapa also has SSL included. SSL is free on most hosting plans. SSL is a security protocol that encrypts all the information your site sends and receives. It ensures maximal customer safety. It is also an SEO factor, and it will help your website rank higher.

Great Uptime + Satisfaction Guarantee + Solid Speed

HostPapa has a good track record, with uptime that is better than the industry’s standard. You can expect your site to be always available, driving customers in around the clock.

But, to make sure it’s not just talk, HostPapa has a customer satisfaction guarantee. All of their plans have a 99.9% uptime guarantee. That’s great, considering that some hosting companies we’ve reviewed don’t provide uptime guarantees.

As for the speed, HostPapa certainly delivers. It’s not the fastest host we’ve tested, but it comes in near the top. That combined with good uptime and security makes them a solid choice.

Hosting Plans

HostPapa Shared Hosting

Shared hosting, as the most affordable solution, always attracts the most attention. And let’s be honest, a lot of websites don’t need anything more than this. This is why it’s easily the most popular solution.

On shared plans, your site is on the same server with others, sharing resources, hence the name. Most of the time everything goes without interference. However, sudden traffic spikes on any of the sites can cause performance issues on others that share the hardware. The same goes for infections and security threats. But that rarely happens.

HostPapa shared plans offer some decent features. Features include unlimited bandwidth on all plans, and SSD storage, which improves speeds. You can also use their builder, and every plan comes with 120 free templates to start up your website in no time.

They all come with free SSL certificates. Not all hosts provide this, and it significantly improves your site security. It’s also worth noting that all plans have eCommerce capabilities, something shop owners will like to hear.

Shared Plans Pricing:

• Starter – $3.95/mo – 2 sites, 25 subdomains, 100 GB SSD, unmetered bandwidth, free domain, Starter Website Builder, 100 email accounts, no advanced security nor other high-level features.
  
  
• Business – $3.95/mo – unlimited sites, unlimited subdomains, and domains, unlimited SSD, unmetered bandwidth, free domain, Starter Website Builder, unlimited email accounts, no advanced security nor other high-level features.
  
  
• Business Pro – $12.95/mo – everything unlocked and unlimited, with all of the advanced security and high-end features.

HostPapa WordPress Managed Hosting Plans

WordPress managed hosting is the best kind for WordPress users. This type of hosting relieves the pressure, as you leave site maintenance to your host.

Everyone knows that if you leave your WordPress site neglected, you are inviting hackers to breach it. There are always plugin, theme and WordPress updates you have to install. If you don’t, you are putting your site, customers, and reputation at risk.

Getting a managed plan means that you let your hosting company take care of all that. That will guarantee that your site stays functional. You’ll always be up to date, with the latest versions of themes and plugins as well. Also, if something goes wrong, you just need to call your hosting company. They will be responsible for taking care of any issues.

For the reasons mentioned above, we recommend managed WordPress hosting to everyone. And we have to say, HostPapa has one of the best offers when it comes to this type of hosting in the whole industry. 

Managed WordPress Hosting Breakdown

WP-optimized servers and knowledgeable staff – this is huge. While any server can run WordPress, having hardware that is optimized explicitly with this purpose in mind is very important. That guarantees maximum performance and server stability. You can really feel the difference with HostPapa. Also, they have a dedicated WordPress support team which you can access at any time. These guys know their trade. You will not need much explaining before they tackle your problem.

Excellent speeds – HostPapa has caching on all WordPress plans, as well as free CDN. This means that your site will be blazing fast for visitors all over the world.

Advanced firewall – HostPapa’s firewall will block hack attempts and other malicious traffic before it reaches your site. Premium plans also come with an automatic malware detection and removal system. This puts the security of your website to the highest level.

Jetpack features – one of the most popular WordPress plugins, Jetpack, is included on all plans. You can use it for marketing, but also backups and security. WordPress Business Pro has a premium version of Jetpack. It will replace dozens of other plugins.

HostPapa WordPress Hosting Pricing

• Starter – $3.95/mo – 2 sites, 25 subdomains, 100 GB SSD, unmetered bandwidth, free domain, no SEO-plugin, no daily backups, 100 email accounts, no rocket servers, no advanced security features.
  
  
• Business – $5.95/mo – unlimited sites, subdomains, SSD, bandwidth, emails, no SEO-plugin, no daily backups, no rocket servers, no advanced security features.
  
  
• Business Pro – $12.95/mo – everything unlocked and unlimited + advanced security, rocket servers, Jetpack Premium features and more. This is the ultimate plan. It’s one of the best WordPress managed solutions any hosting provider has that we tried. We highly recommend it.

HostPapa Virtual Private Servers

VPS “virtualize” dedicated servers, giving your website guaranteed resources. This type of hosting means that your site will have its own guaranteed amount of CPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth. No other website on the same server can access it.

That will ensure stable performance even if other sites have traffic spikes. All this makes VPS a balanced solution, as it stands between shared and dedicated servers. They give you great performance at a more affordable price then dedicated servers.

All VPS hosting plans from HostPapa are managed. They provide you with full root access, which is something developers will appreciate. They are all on premium servers to guarantee maximal performance, with allocated resources, that you can increase at any time. There is also a ton of extras and apps to boost your site functionality even further.

HostPapa VPS Pricing (only for the first month)

• Plus – $19.99 – 4 CPU, 1.5 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD, 1 TB Bandwidth
• Pro – $39.99 – 4 CPU, 3 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD, 2 TB Bandwidth
• Premum – $109.99 – 8 CPU, 6 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD, 2 TB Bandwidth
• Ultra – $149.99 – 8 CPU, 12 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, 4 TB Bandwidth
• Extreme – $249.99 – 12 CPU, 24 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 8 TB Bandwidth

HostPapa Reseller Hosting Plans

If you are a designer or developer, or an agency who has many clients, you may be interested in HostPapa Reseller Plans. With these plans you offer your clients control of their websites, but only if you want to. You can manage all sites from a single interface, which significantly simplifies the process.

Here are the plans, all for unlimited sites:

• Bronze – $24.95/mo – 50 GB SSD, 500 GB bandwidth
• Silver – $34.95/mo – 80 GB SSD, 700 GB bandwidth
• Gold – $49.95/mo – 120 GB SSD, 1 TB bandwidth
• Platinum – $74.95/mo – 150 GB SSD, 1.2 TB bandwidth
• Titanium – $99.95/mo – 200 GB SSD, 1.4 TB bandwidth

HostPapa Uptime and Speed

During our HostPapa review we made sure to test out the uptime and speeds we had. We did this over a number of months, and used a blank WordPress install. This is how we did it for each host we tested uptime and speed on.

As for the uptime, we averaged 99.98%. This put them in 3rd place overall behind only SiteGround and BlueHost by 0.01%. This is some great uptime, but again it’s expected when they have an uptime guarantee.

As for the site speed I was shocked at how quick HostPapa was. HostPapa finished 3rd in our speed tests as well behind only A2 Hosting and SiteGround. Their average site speed load time was 677ms.

I will note that I saw more fluctuating times when reviewing load times for HostPapa when comparing them to some of the other fast hosts. Regardless, the speed was great, even after months of testing.

HostPapa Support

We have to say that HostPapa has an excellent support team. They work fast, and you will never have to wait for hours before someone gets back to you. We unfortunately experienced this with other hosts we’ve tested. If you want to learn more about those other sites check out our WordPress hosting comparison.

From our experience WordPress Managed plans have especially great and knowledgeable support. They are willing and ready to help you as soon as you call them.

You can reach the HostPapa support team in a variety of ways as well. You can do this via tickets, live chat, phone, or you can read their extensive knowledge base. We consider HostPapa are one of the higher ranking support options.

Additionally, we learned of the PapaSquad. These team can help you with tutorial videos, one on one training and more. The support covers various languages such as English, French, German, and Spanish. This is a great feature for people new to hosting and websites.

30-day Money-Back Guarantee

Thirty days is what most hosting providers give, which is enough time to try the service. Some other hosts give 3x a much. However, 30 days is pretty standard in the hosting industry.
I always recommend taking full advantage of these money back guarantees. If you try and host, and you’re seeing red flags right away it’s nice having this option.

HostPapa Review: Final Thoughts

Throughout this HostPapa review we have covered a lot. There are certainly many more pros than cons when looking at this host. As I mentioned earlier, the WordPress managed hosting is hard to beat. The only comparable plan out there is with SiteGround, who I also highly recommend.

At the end of the day you want your host to be so good you don’t even have to think about it. Managed WordPress hosting plans help meet these demands. HostPapa has one of the best managed plans that we tested.

Overall I rated HostPapa as a 9 out of 10 stars.

Have you ever tried HostPapa before? If so please let me know what you think of this HostPapa review. In fact, you can leave your own mini HostPapa review below in the comments!

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