2 Hosting Zoom Reviews:

Hosting Zoom Introduction

Based in Houston, Texas, Hosting Zoom was founded in 1998 and acquired in 2008 by Landis Holdings, Inc. Owned by CEO Greg Landis, Landis Holdings also owns a number of related brands, including Reseller Zoom and Jaguar PC. Hosting Zoom is therefore one of several associated brands – sometimes the help content on the site refers to one of its sister companies.

As a company, Hosting Zoom It emphasises the ‘power, speed and reliability’ of its hosting services. Rather than pushing shared hosting on price alone, it’s keener to highlight its cloud technology and dedicated server hosting. It doesn’t offer anything else, such as VPS hosting or reseller plans.

Hosting Zoom Hosting Plans

Hosting Zoom offers a fairly narrow spectrum of hosting plans. As mentioned in the introduction, it focuses on two or three types of hosting and leaves the more specialised stuff to other companies within the Landis Holdings group.

● Shared hosting is all based on cPanel, which is always a good sign. Both plans utilise Cloud Linux; ZoomMini only allows one website to be created, and it also can’t be paid for monthly. VirtualZoom is a dramatically more powerful plan that provides the user with many times more storage capacity, bandwidth and so on.

● Hosting Zoom has five dedicated server plans on its website, and customers can choose from a variety of configurations and data centre locations. Dedicated servers are available on Linux (cPanel or Plesk) or Windows 2003 (Plesk).

● Reseller and VPS hosting is offered through different brands: Reseller Zoom and ModVPS respectively. As such, they don’t fall within the scope of this Hosting Zoom review.

● Cloud hosting is heavily advertised on the site, but it wasn’t available at the time of writing this article. The ETA for launch was September 2012, and it’s now February 2013. We can only assume Hosting Zoom are experiencing some problems bringing cloud hosting online.

Hosting Zoom Uptime/Downtime

Hosting Zoom’s shared hosting is based in the cloud, so it’s able to offer a 100% uptime guarantee due to the improved reliability of the cloud. The guarantee is not mentioned in its terms of service, however.

The host has a network status page on its website but it was blank when I checked it, and there are no historical uptime stats.

In terms of data centres, Hosting Zoom uses colocation at at least five facilities around the world (I found conflicting information on this). In the US, it has servers in Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas, Texas and Los Angeles, California. Chicago is also mentioned in the smallprint. In Europe, it uses two facilities: one in the UK, one in the Netherlands. All have on-site security staff, electronic and physical access control, multiple generators and dual power feeds.

The host provides two test download files so customers can check their connection speed to the server, but it doesn’t state which server the files are located on. I’m not sure what customers could really learn from this, since their website could be located somewhere else anyway.

Shared hosting accounts are backed up daily, although the backups are supposed to be used in emergencies only. If you make a mistake (such as deleting a file accidentally), Hosting Zoom will charge for supplying a backup copy.

Hosting Zoom Support

Support is provided 24/7 all year round via a ticketing system and live chat; the icon for the live chat tool buzzes around the screen as you browse the company’s website, so you certainly won’t miss it.

Hosting Zoom also publishes a number for toll-free US support line – there’s no international telephone number that I can see, so customers outside the US might have a hard time using it. It’s also unclear whether support staff are based in the US or elsewhere in the world.

In terms of resources and help, there’s plenty on offer. There are a series of Flash tutorials, a knowledgebase, a blog, FAQs and a forum. Hosting Zoom’s Twitter feed is used for announcements, not support. On Facebook, staff members interact with customers, although they are often referred back to the ticketing system. I noticed that many of the customer comments related to slow support response times.

Hosting Zoom in the News

I couldn’t find any news reports or high-profile blogs relating to Hosting Zoom or its services.

Hosting Zoom Control Panel

Across the board, Hosting Zoom’s customers are provisioned with cPanel, so anyone familiar with the software will feel at home. The website doesn’t say which version of cPanel is currently on offer.

Clients on dedicated server plans can choose cPanel with WHM or Plesk (Linux and Windows).

Hosting Zoom Extras

Shared hosting customers benefit from a free website builder tool and Softaculous, a script installer with 200 applications available for one-click deployment. These include the usual suspects: WordPress, Joomla, phpBB and so on. Customers will soon be able to claim a free IPv6 IP address, although this wasn’t on offer at the time of composing this summary,

No marketing or advertising vouchers are included in any of Hosting Zoom’s deals.

Hosting Zoom Money Back Guarantee / Cancellation Policy

Hosting Zoom’s money-back guarantee is confusing.

It’s advertised as a ’45-day money-back guarantee’, but if you take a look at the Terms of Service, you’ll notice that it’s actually worded as a 30-day money-back guarantee. At one stage, the document actually states ‘cancel your account within thirty (45) days’. This is incredibly sloppy – after all, a ToS should be considered a legal document, and customers would be within their rights to complain.

Regardless of the time limit, customers must fill in a special cancellation form within 30 days of the beginning of their contract if they want to cancel. You can only claim once under this guarantee.

Hosting Zoom does not provide refunds in any other circumstances, regardless of the reasons for the cancellation.

Hosting Zoom Summary

Hosting Zoom has a professional website and its customers benefit from 100% uptime thanks to an investment in cloud hosting. However, the mistakes on its website don’t inspire confidence. The conflicting clause in the Terms of Service is just one example of poor attention to detail; I also saw multiple typos and errors across the site which detract from its professional image.

If you’re looking for cloud hosting specifically, Hosting Zoom appears to be a competent provider. It’s worth reviewing customer feedback on the company’s Facebook page before signing up for a long-term contract.