HostMonster Review: Dated Dud Or Next Big Brand? We Asked Users

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by Toni Allen

Last updated: August 10, 2020

Our Verdict: Outstanding for Simple Hosting

HostMonster provides budget web hosting bundled with a free domain name, 5 email accounts; and one-click WordPress installation. Their hosting services come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

You can currently get up to 50% off with our special discount link.

Are There Any Coupons Or Discounts?

Yes – you can currently save 50% on HostMonster with this exclusive coupon.

Is HostMonster the Right Host For You?

• Expert Review — read our thorough analysis by hosting expert Toni Allen.
• Customer Reviews — see what HostMonster customers have to say.
• Plans — see HostMonster plans and pricing.
• FAQs — find the answers to the most asked questions about HostMonster!

HostMonster is a popular web hosting company that offers free domain names and hosting plans that target small business customers.

In this HostMonster review, I’ll examine the features they offer with their web hosting services and show you how their hosting plans compare to other hosts.

Small Business Hosting

HostMonster specializes in hosting for small businesses.

With included domain names, easy hosting set-up, a free website builder, and one-click app installations, people can get started without needing any technical knowledge or going elsewhere for additional services.

Larger companies can find more powerful hosting options with their VPS and dedicated server plans. However, HostMonster is mostly focused on providing budget shared hosting.

Their plans are well-suited to anyone starting a website for the first time.

About HostMonster

HostMonster is a web hosting provider that’s been around for two decades. The company is part of the Endurance International Group (EIG), a collection of hosting brands for small businesses.

HostMonster’s Technology

In addition, HostMonster’s technology includes:

• Dual Quad Processor Performance servers
• Diesel generator backup power
• Linux operating system
• 24/7 network monitoring.

These architecture and infrastructure specifications allow HostMonster to offer reliable hosting, reducing the risk of their customers’ websites experiencing large outages.

Continued below user reviews.

HostMonster Reviews by Our Community

Overall Rating from 88 Reviews by HostMonster Customers

Support
Quality
Features
Value

Filter reviews by: Most HelpfulMost RecentNegativePositive

Most Helpful Reviews

Chad Pederson pedersonrewalty.com

Feb 26, 2016

I’ve been a HostMonster customer for about 8 years. I host all kinds of different custom Html and WordPress websites on my HostMonster account. I’ve never had an issue with downtime, service, etc.

Everything seems to run very smoothly. FTP always works. I like the cpanel interface. Making custom name server changes is also a breeze for the domains I purchase through HostMonster (though the bulk of my domains are at GoDaddy).

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Brandon Hanna allinforou.com

Mar 15, 2017

Best hosting I could ask for. Their customer support is second to none, and the support staff speaks perfect English. Very professional and always helpful.

I work on mostly WordPress websites and have never had an issue. Only thing to consider, however, is that their monthly prices are very expensive. You get what you pay for though, so I don’t mind it at all ($6 a month extra over the competition never killed anyone).

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Martin Z hellosuckers.net

Feb 22, 2014

I have been with Hostmonster for about 7 years. At the beginning it was OK and they provided a great service – fast, reliable, and with a great support. But about 3 years ago I started experiencing slow loading, too many down times (at first, they claimed fire in the server room, then a failure of a router and today DDoS attack).

Many times when I complained about a speed time, they blamed me for unoptimized websites and many other stuff. Today I lost my patience when my whole account was down since 11 am and it is now 9 pm and it is still down. All my domains, websites, email accounts are dead.

At first I called them and they told me that it is OK and that they could load everything on their end. And they blamed my ISP provider using wrong routing tables. I had to argue that even third party ping services such as isitdown.com couldn’t ping the server and whether they also used wrong tables.

After arguing for some time, they found out that their server I was hosting on was under DDoS attacked, so they shut it down. Can you imagine it? They simply shut down the server.

They do not care about businesses of their clients. So, if you want a reliable service, run! Run fast away from this company.

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Seth Cottam sethcottam.com

May 25, 2013

I’ve done development on dozens of server but used Host Monster for my personal development server for about a year and a half. I have had a half dozen problems that I’ve never had elsewhere, which hostmonster claims are not caused by them. Examples, resetting the php.ini to turn off error reporting (3 times asking support – finally resolved by adding code to each page I was debugging), Displaying ads on my site due to a bug in my code that made them think the page not in use. (3 times asking support – they swore it was not them until it was finally resolved by turning off a cPanel option…the rep finally addmitted it must be them, also later fixed my code).

My NaviCat connection went bad, they claimed I’d have to reinstall my NaviCat even though it still worked fine on the 6 other servers I tested it on (2-3 times with support, they stopped responding, unresolved). Every few months there is a new issue, only one unique to my experience with Host Monster. Tldr; It’s worth it if you need a cheap way to start, plan on moving on asap. Their support is not knowledgeable in their product, you’ll have to contact them multiple times for any resolution, if you get one at all.

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Tawny Smith reddiamondteaistoxic.com

Mar 21, 2013

When I first started with HostMonster in 2008 they provided good service. Now in 2013 they suck. I have a lot of domain names, and a couple websites I’ve had them host.

HostMonster are always taking money from my credit card. I get emails about the withdrawals with no explanation as to the charges. I have to contact them to find out.

I later found out I was being charged for hosting services I wasn’t using because no one there explained that they don’t allow you to just park a domain name. You Have to pay for server space with every domain name you register with them. This is not the norm with domain name registration.

In addition to ripping you off, their customer service is awful. When you ask them a question via their "open a ticket" format, you Never get a response. I am using another company for my website hosting and I’m glad I switched.

I wouldn’t recommend them. This company has gone from one of the best to being one of the worst.

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RJ Fisher e-mergemarketing.net

Mar 21, 2013

Not sure why or how people can give these guys glowing reviews. Fact of the matter is that over the past couple months, our business is without a website or email on the average of 2-3 times a Week. The end of 2012, they changed something in their email system to where we are now getting about 10% of our emails bounced back as reported Spam.

Emails that have been successful to the same email addresses for the past two years. When their technical support department is contacted, they pass the problem on to others or shrug their shoulders and indicate they don’t know what the problem is. This isn’t a one-off situation.

Every time we have a bounced email reported back as Spam, we contact HostMonster and are told the same thing "Contact the ISP of the company who is responsible for their email processing and report it to them." Who here knows who the ISP is for all the outbound emails they are sending. Website and email outages have been running at a rate of about 2-3 a week. When we call their technical support department, it is like the first time they heard their was a problem and simply give us an "I don’t know answer".

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Garth Hjelte chickensys.com

Mar 18, 2013

I completely do not recommend Hostmonster because of their support. I really want to be fair with Hostmonster. I have been with them for over 6+ years.

It’s the nature of hosting that when it works, it works, and it’ll work for a reasonably long time. They have lots of services and the have a updated cPanel and their support is great Only as far as access to someone over the phone. But as some other reviewers say, if something doesn’t work, you’re screwed.

After tons of problems over the last months (late 2012 early 2013) I can’t deal with the downtime (often exceeding 2 weeks) anymore. Obviously such downtime is intolerable, but that’s not my total complaint. When you call HostMonster, you are getting a American call center with reps that know just enough.

Some know a little more, but none really know who the server works nor can really deal with your issue. If things get a little tough, they go into a chat with a L2 or even L3 rep, so you really can’t talk with the people that really can do anything. But that’s not all – I’m not a server guy, but I know a certain amount just from the experiences I get.

But the types of solutions I get from even the L2 or L3 reps indirectly never solve the problems; in fact, I could swear they don’t even read the issues. Most of the time they assume and make their recommendations assuming it’s your fault or there’s something you can do. In my case it wasn’t, and in the last problem I had I actually logged over 9 hours (and counting) over the phone.

Let me make this clear: if there was anything I could do about my issues, I would love to do it. I google and do lots of research. If I’m misunderstanding HostMonster, I want to be the first to admit it.

I just want my site(s) up, if I’m right or wrong means nothing to me. I can tell if technical support is flawed just as a fluke or if it’s systematic. With HostMonster, there’s no question in my mind that it’s systematically incompetent.

I know this because I have had several different issues over time, and all of them have taken weeks to resolve, and all of them have the same pattern – they assume the problem is on your end, you take 10-14 days breaking them down that it’s not on your end, and then finally they do something and – look at here, it was a IP they were blocking by accident or a misconifigured server entry! All those issues – from Day One – could have been fixed if they would just been thorough and stopped blowing me off. I understand many customers may not know what they are doing.

But in every case I was always kind and polite and tried to bring out the facts in a clear and concise way. But none of that ever helped. I always was humiliated and exhausted by the number of incorrect options they suggested that never worked.

Plus every time you call up you are essentially starting over. Their tech support is very nice and friendly, but that’s NOT what I ultimately need. I need results. I never got that from HostMonster.

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Katty Avila cavsi.com

Dec 10, 2012

Server issues in a daily Basic. My website has been down temporary almost every day. HostMonster says "They have a server issue" but they don’t solve the problem.

My website has reach more than 20.000 daily visitors, I don’t think their server can handle websites with so much traffic. Now Google is penalizing my site because it is down so many times. What a rip of!!!

Unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth… such a lie!!!

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Shared Hosting Plans and Features 

HostMonster’s shared plans can work for hobbyists or small businesses.

It seems commonplace for hosting companies to offer unlimited resources to their shared hosting customers – and HostMonster is no exception.

HostMonster provides “unlimited bandwidth” on all of their shared hosting plans. But, this doesn’t mean that you can use as much as you want.

It just means that the company won’t charge you according to how much you use. Instead, accounts on a shared server share all the bandwidth.

What Does “Unlimited Bandwidth” Mean?

Sharing bandwidth can be a problem for demanding websites as they may require more bandwidth than is available at times.

However, this storage situation should be adequate for personal websites and small businesses since they won’t have a problem with bandwidth limits. The majority of HostMonster’s customers will be fine with their bandwidth and disk space.

Your disk space allotment will depend on the shared hosting plan that you choose. There are strict limits placed on their cheaper plans while their highest-level plan provides unlimited disk space.

Any small website should have enough disk space, even with their cheapest plan.

Free Domain Registration

All HostMonster plans include a free domain name for one full year. After this, you will have to renew your domain registration and pay for it yourself.

If you’re looking to get a domain name alone, check out HostGator instead. They will let you purchase names on their own and point them to whichever hosting company you choose.

Cheapest Plans

HostMonster’s cheapest plan also allows you to host one domain and manage 5 email accounts.

On the other hand, their most expensive shared hosting plan will give you unlimited email accounts, and allow for the hosting of unlimited domains.

More Email Addresses

Why would you need all these email accounts, you ask? Well, you’ll probably never need hundreds of them.

But if you’re a business it’s useful because you can create email addresses for individual employees.

With HostMonster, you’ll have three different webmail solutions, so your employees can choose the email client that they like the best.

Shared Hosting Features

If you explore HostMonster’s website, you’ll eventually land on their “Hosting Features” page. This is a list of everything that they offer. Realize that these features aren’t necessarily included in every plan.

The list is a bit overwhelming, so I’ll break it down for you.

Website Builder

In addition to their unlimited resources, they have listed many other inclusions. For one, all accounts will have access to the free Weebly website builder. This will be described in detail later in this review.

MOJO Marketplace

Additional user-friendly features include HostMonster’s partnership with MOJO Marketplace. With access to this marketplace from your control panel, you’ll be able to install applications in one click.

WordPress and Blogging

Like almost all bargain hosts, HostMonster provides a user-friendly way to create and launch a WordPress website.

You can do this directly from the control panel (dashboard).

If you already have a website you may not realize that you can add a WordPress blog to it. HostMonster provides instructions on how to do this.

Developer Features

Developers will have features like FTP access, SSH access, custom Cron jobs, MySQL databases, and CGI-Bin.

Additionally, people with coding knowledge will enjoy support for multiple languages including PHP5, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, and JavaScript. These features won’t be important to most hosting users.

E-commerce

For e-commerce functionality, HostMonster gives you various shopping carts to choose from. For example, osCommerce, Agora, Cube Cart, and Zen Cart.

SSL Certificates

Your website will be hosted on an SSL-secure server and you can generate a free security certificate to place on your website.

This will provide your customers with the reassurance they need to enter payment information on your store.

Best practice in 2019 is to use an SSL certificate for any site, not just e-commerce sites.

Bonus Plan: What’s In It?

If you want a dedicated IP address and a private SSL certificate for further e-commerce security, you can get these bundled in HostMonster’s bonus plan.

This bonus plan also comes with Site Backup Pro so you won’t have to purchase it separately.

Media Hosting

So that you can give your website all the dynamic and interesting content it needs to keep visitors around, HostMonster supports video streaming, audio streaming, and MIDI files.

Free Website Builder

HostMonster gives you access to the Weebly website builder, a popular drag-and-drop website builder.

It allows almost anyone to design and build a website. The website builder software is completely online, meaning you won’t have to install anything to use it.

Weebly vs. WordPress

Upon logging into HostMonster for the first time, you’ll be greeted by options to pick a theme to start designing your new website with WordPress. This shows how simple it is to get started on WordPress when you host with this company.

Designing with Weebly is simple. You just choose a template to start with and then customize it to suit your brand. You can change colors, fonts, and add social sharing buttons. You can drag in pre-built sections like forms.

How to Activate Weebly

Log into your control panel and navigate to “Weebly.” Then click on it.

You’ll be prompted to pick a theme.

Then you’ll have complete drag-and-drop control over your design. Add elements to your pages like maps, contact forms, and buttons.

Online Store Features

People building online stores will like that they can add product pages and categories to their store as well.

You’ll also have the possibility of adding entire pre-built sections to your website pages.

To test this out, I added a menu and a “meet our team” section to my website. These snapped into place and integrated nicely into the homepage.

Interested in HostMonster?
Get the lowest price by using our special discount link. Includes free domain, free site builders, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

VPS Plans

HostMonster has powerful virtual private servers (VPS) for people and businesses that need more power. You won’t need technical expertise to use them because these plans are all fully-managed.

You’ll also be given dedicated and guaranteed server resources.

Dedicated Resources

What does this mean? That you will always have the disk space and bandwidth that is pre-defined by the plan you choose. No sharing of resources with other people on one server. The resources that you purchased are guaranteed to always be available to you.

HostMonster’s servers are built on cloud technology, allowing them to offer you scalable features.

As a result, you can expand your business in the future with easy resource upgrades.

VPS Pricing at HostMonster

Their VPS plans are the same prices as the ones you’ll find at Bluehost and HostGator.

However, their cheapest plan will give you much less disk space than you’ll get with HostGator’s VPS plan. And, Bluehost gives you unlimited bandwidth on all of their plans.

No Uptime Guarantee

No, so you will not be compensated if your website experiences significant downtime.

Other companies, such as HostGator, provide uptime guarantees and will compensate you with a full month of hosting credit if you experience significant downtime.

Instead, HostMonster makes the same uptime statement as many other companies that don’t offer guarantees.

They acknowledge that their servers may experience downtime which is caused by issues typically resolved within 15 minutes. Though, it can sometimes take longer to fix problems.

As a result, HostMonster will issue a pro-rated refund if you cancel your hosting account due to server downtime. You can engage in uptime monitoring from your control panel to keep an eye on this.

Cloudflare CDN

Yes, they give you access to Cloudflare, a powerful CDN, for free on all plans.

You will just have to enable this from your control panel by clicking the Cloudflare icon and clicking “activate.”

Cloudflare caches the content of your website across a global network so that your website viewers will receive content from the location closest to them. They will enjoy much faster loading times as a result of this.

This will help you reduce bounce rates from visitors who don’t want to wait a few seconds extra for your website to load.

24/7 Customer Support

One thing I always look for on hosting company websites is live chat for their browsing site visitors. It’s unbelievably helpful to be able to just start a live chat with a customer service member.

Support for Prospective Customers

Sometimes you’ll want to know something about a hosting company that they don’t make clear on their website.

For example, they may not make it obvious where their servers are located, if they offer website migration, or what kind of control panel they give you.

Having live chat support for everyone, not just paying customers, is a great thing that HostMonster does.

I had a chance to ask them a question and they responded within 5 minutes with a helpful answer. I was satisfied with our short interaction.

Tech Support for Paid Customers

HostMonster support can be reached by live chat or with a toll-free number as well.

These resources are available 24/7 for customers of paid plans. Their website displays a little green light on the support page if their phone and chat assistants are online. They also have a place to display the average wait time you may experience.

Online Help Documentation

When you land on HostMonster’s support page, you’re greeted with links to their most popular help articles. These explain how to do things like setting up your email account.

The articles themselves are very helpful, but the layout of the knowledgebase isn’t. I would have liked to see some kind of organization on this page.

Many other companies, like Bluehost, make it easier to find help articles on the topics you need. But with HostMonster, you’ll have to use their search feature to find anything.

Payment and Renewal Options

HostMonster gives you multiple payment options and billing preferences. Their services are auto-renewed by default to prevent you from experiencing outages or losing your domain name.

However, you can also choose to renew your services manually.

The company does not offer monthly billing options. You will need to sign up for and pay in advance for at least a full year of hosting.

Canceling Your Plan

You also won’t be able to get a refund if you cancel your plan before your term is up.

So, keep in mind that you’ll be stuck paying for HostMonster’s services until the end of your term if you decide you no longer want to host with them.

Monthly vs. Yearly Payments

If you don’t like this and would rather pay for hosting month-to-month, then HostGator may be a better company for you.

They offer their plans on a monthly basis so you can cancel anytime without losing months of hosting that you’ve already paid for.

Behind the Scenes: cPanel

For managing your hosting, HostGator gives you their own customized version of cPanel.

Using the HostMonster control panel is simple. Upon logging into your hosting account, you’ll be greeted by a clean and organized space to work with.

Right away they give you a preview of your website and an easy log-in button to access WordPress.

On the left sidebar, you’ll be able to view the sites you’re hosting, visit the Mojo Marketplace for themes and add-ons, check and manage email, as well as access advanced features typical to cPanel.

When you select these advanced options, you’ll be able to view information about your hosting plans and keep track of disk space and bandwidth usage.

You’ll also have access to various statistical tools like AWStats and Webalizer.

You’ll find it easy to install applications like WordPress and Joomla from the “website” section of the control panel.

Also, try out the included Weebly website builder if you want to build your website here instead of on WordPress.

Our HostMonster Discount for You

If you want to give HostMonster a try, don’t forget you can get a full refund if you cancel within 30 days. Just make sure you take advantage of our discount before signing up.

Alternative Hosts

If HostMonster sounds good to you but you want the reliability of an uptime guarantee, you should look at HostGator.

HostGator is a very similar hosting company with a lot of the same features and pricing structures.

HostGator includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee for all plans. You can receive compensation from them if your site experiences more downtime than this.

HostMonster may run WordPress, but all they offer is a one-click download of the app. Other hosting companies can give you optimized WordPress plans that are designed to run the CMS system at optimal performance.

For this, look into Bluehost’s WordPress plans which are built on VPS technology for extreme speed.

HostMonster Quick Overview

Here’s a look at HostMonster from cruising altitude.

Specializations

HostMonster provides customer support in several ways. They are available 24/7 via phone and live chat, ready to answer questions or solve problems.

Inexperienced users to install apps easily through MOJO Marketplace.

HostMonster offers developers many access features and tools.

Migration Policy

HostMonster offers a website transfer service from your account. They will migrate up to 5 websites and 20 email accounts for you, from one single account with your old hosting provider.

Online Support Documentation

HostMonster has good online help materials.

1. Searchable Knowledgebase with 550+ articles
2. “Getting Started” launch page that links to all the steps you’ll need to take as a new website owner
3. “How-to” video tutorials
4. All help pages are tagged, making it easy to find relevant search terms
5. Live chat 24/7.

Control Panels

HostMonster uses a customized version of the cPanel control panel.

Datacenters

The company’s datacenter is located in the state of Utah, in the U.S.

Money-Back Guarantee

HostMonster offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can cancel your hosting account by contacting their customer service and you will be issued a full refund.

HostMonster’s Lowest-Priced Plan

HostMonster’s cheapest plan starts at $4.95/month for your first term, when signing up for 36 months. Your plan will renew at their regular rate which is $10.99/month.

This plan comes with:

• One website and one free domain
• Unmetered bandwidth and 50 GB of storage
• 5 email accounts, each with 100 MB of storage
• 5 parked domains
• 25 subdomains.

Backup Policy

The company states that they provide courtesy backups for your website. So, what exactly does this mean? First of all, they don’t offer redundant or mirrored backups. Only one copy of your website will be backed up.

They run these backups at their own discretion. These are not guaranteed, so don’t rely on them for your backup needs.

Site Backup Pro

Instead, you can add Site Backup Pro to your plan which will allow you to perform your own daily backups and restore your website from multiple points in history.

It will be your own responsibility to download backups if you wish to keep a copy of your data.

HostMonster will delete backups older than 30 days.

PCI Compliance

Yes, HostMonster supports PCI compliance on all of their plans.

Pros and Cons

Let’s summarize. What’s HostMonster best at? What could be improved?

Interested in HostMonster?
Get the lowest price by using our special discount link. Includes free domain, free site builders, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Final Thoughts

HostMonster’s website isn’t nearly as welcoming as their popular alternatives, Bluehost and HostGator.

It doesn’t provide much detail for consumers and lists a lot of features without really explaining them. You’ll also have to do some work to find the breakdown of their shared hosting plans as they’re hidden behind a “get started” button.

However, the company does have some affordable hosting options. You can find some basic shared hosting for smaller businesses at a budget price. And many included features that developers will enjoy.

Ready to try HostMonster for your website? Use our discount!

Contributing editor: Natalie Mootz

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About Toni Allen

Webmaster, mom, juggler. Toni manages the day-to-day operations of WhoIsHostingThis. She is a keen hiker, climber, and outdoors explorer.

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