Crucial Paradigm In 2018: How Would Crucial Paradigm Clients Review Them?

Crucial Paradigm Introduction

Crucial Paradigm is a US-based web hosting company located in Dallas, Texas. They were founded in 2003, and appear to be the US version of the Australian hosting company, Crucial. While there is no direct mention of the Australian counterpart on the US site, many sections of their website, including the support pages, link directly to the Australian site.

Services & Specializations

Crucial Paradigm is all about simplicity. They want to make the process of getting hosting, setting up your website, and maintaining it as easy as possible. To that end, they only offer two hosting plans: a small business plan and a big business plan. There’s no need to review a long list of features to figure out which one offers everything you need, because the only differences between the two plans is the amount of storage space, the number of add-on domains, and the price. Simple.

Both plans include all the essentials for hosting everything from a blog, business website, or an eCommerce site: Unlimited traffic, unlimited email accounts, unlimited sub-domains, unlimited MySQL databases, and a dedicated IP address. If you already have a website set up with another host, they will migrate it to your new Crucial Paradigm plan for free.

A particularly nice feature of their site was the Terms and Conditions. Keeping with their theme of simplicity, many of the more complicated sections not only include the required legalese, but also a simple-to-follow, plain English translation.

Crucial Paradigm features the cPanel control panel, which gives you access to all the expected services: webmail, DNS nameservers, domain management, billing, and a whole lot more.

Infrastructure

Crucial Paradigm’s infrastructure is hosted in Dallas, Texas, at the Tierpoint datacenter, It features 68,000 square feet of environmentally controlled, secure data center space.

Support and Customer Service

Crucial Paradigm offers 24-hour support, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Support requests can be made through a dynamic support form on their website, or by using the live chat window to talk to someone directly. It’s unclear where the support is located. While they claim to be a US-based company, all of the support features on their US website take you directly to the support center for the Australian site.

Crucial Paradigm previously offered a large selection of both Linux and Windows hosting plans with a variety of features and control panels. While these are no longer available with their simplified, two-plan hosting model, they continue to support all of their legacy products.

Security and Backups

If you’re hosting an online store, collecting private information from your website visitors, or need a secure site for any other reason, Crucial Paradigm offers private SSL Certification through RapidSSL. This is an entry-level certificate, offering 256-bit encryption and a $10,000 warranty.

Crucial Paradigm makes backups just as simple as everything else. They automatically perform daily backups of your site, so you don’t have to remember to schedule them yourself. However, their terms of service state that Crucial Paradigm has no responsibility for your data, so it’s a good idea to set up additional backups of your own, preferably to a secondary location.

Uptime Guarantee

Crucial Paradigm boasts a 99.9% uptime guarantee for both of its hosting plans.

Billing & Payment Policies

Crucial Paradigm accepts all major credit cards and PayPal. They do not accept virtual credit cards or gift cards. Payment is collected in advance of each month, and must be paid within five days of the invoice due date, or accounts may be suspended or cancelled. They also offer automatic payments.

Cancellation requests have to be submitted through your account control panel and must be made before your next billing cycle.

Conclusion

Crucial Paradigm make hosting simple and pain-free, from the product selection process to migrating your old site to automatic backups. Picking the best hosting plan for your organization is the tech equivalent of buying your dress shirts based on the Small, Medium, or Large tag on the front. This is a particularly attractive option for small businesses that need a web presence, but don’t have a team of IT professionals ready to review the contract and monitor the server every day.

On the other hand, if you want to know the nitty gritty (processor speed, RAM, available one-click installations), you might want to look elsewhere. Likewise, if you expect your company will exceed the allotted storage space, or plan to host content that requires significant system resources, you would be better served with a more transparent hosting plan.

One last thought, as you’re navigating the Crucial Paradigm website, it’s very easy to find yourself suddenly on their Australian site. The Australian version offers different plans, so this can get a little confusing. If you happen to accidentally pick one of the Australian plans, you’ll know right away, because their domain name selection page defaults to a “.com.au” extension.