Site5 Hosting Review: Hosting For Serious Designers? We’ll Be The Judge Of That.
Disclosure: Your support helps keep the site running! We earn a referral fee for some of the services we recommend on this page. Learn more
Our overview of Site5…
Expert Opinion
Hear from our web hosting expert, Claire Broadley.
Best Reviews
See what 96 Site5 customers have to say.
Hosting Plans
Compare the best Site5 hosting plans and their prices.
FAQs
Most asked Questions about Site5 – answered!
Site5 Introduction
Site5 was founded in 2002, and it says that quality of service is its highest priority. The company’s mailing address is in Austin, Texas, and it prides itself on having an in-house support department. Hosting features are geared towards customers that need a degree of flexibility, but they are marketed without excessive technical jargon. This makes Site5 a good host for web designers and developers, since they often need a solid feature set without the burden of ongoing server administration.
On many plans, monthly billing is available, in addition to the standard annual and bi-annual contracts. Free migration services are also included on every plan currently advertised.
Key Service Features
Site5 has three service categories: shared, reseller, and VPS. The features you see will vary depending on the class of hosting you’re looking at.
Shared hosting with Site5 does not include cPanel, which is probably the most notable difference from reseller and VPS. Instead, customers get access to its Backstage control panel, which is proprietary. Across all plans, disk space and bandwidth are unmetered, and Site5 is rare, in that it explains its unmetered resource policy very clearly.
Reseller hosting plans are a better choice if you want cPanel. You can divide your space as you wish, and resell as many plans as you like. The trade-off is the capped space and bandwidth, although the cap would likely not be restrictive for the majority of freelance or self-employed web designers or developers.
VPS hosting comes in one flavor: fully-managed only. It includes a set number of cores, a set RAM allocation, and fixed bandwidth and space allocations too. cPanel and WHM are provided, but billed as an extra; if you don’t want to pay, you can opt for the SiteAdmin control panel instead.
Site5 Reviews by Our Community
Overall Rating from 96 Reviews by Site5 Customers
| Support | |
|---|---|
| Quality | |
| Features | |
| Value |
Most Helpful Reviews
Michael John Beil michaelbeil.com
Jan 14, 2014
With consistent uptime, amazing support, and an excellent interface, I am proud to be a Site5 user. If there have been any issues, I was able to pop onto live chat and instantly connect with a support specialist that helped me out. I would say that Site5 has the best shared hosting around, compared to the many others I have used.
Eric Smith rubyleaf.com
Jul 10, 2013
Site5 is awesome because of their responsiveness to questions, issues, requests. I recently bought an SSL Certificate from them and chose to have them install it and they contacted me within about 15 minutes to get it all set up and confirm the settings. About a year ago I had an issue with an email address rejecting emails and it was resolved within 10 minutes.
Site5 is great at having real people address your problems/needs as quickly as possible. Their backend/admin page is simply awesome. Very easy to use, very straightforward and it never feels like they’re constantly trying to upsell you to something else.
They just present the settings and you go from there. I’ve been with Site5 since early 2009 and have no interest in going back to my other hosts that I’ve tried in the past. They’ve been great for the last 4 years and it just seems that they are getting better and better.
Andrew Konstantaras saveoursleep.org
May 02, 2018
Sadly, I have decided to terminate a 10+ year relationship with Site5. When I started with them, they were growing and very customer-centric. Today, they have become a sub-par provider with automatons in customer support and billing.
After trying to reach out to them twice for a very, very simple inquiry (they only provide support via email and chat) and having two separate support chat sessions ranking in the top 5 worst chat sessions of my life. The time lapse between questions and answers ranged from 1 to 10 minutes. After typing several ‘?’ they would answer, "Sorry for the delay" with no substantive answer and then another long time lapse.
This became so infuriating that I told them I wanted to cancel and I wanted a refund on the remaining 17 months of my contract. The automatons in billing ignored all the detail in my correspondence and replied with the same answer, not addressing the issues I was raising. So, I write this to warn others, if you are looking for a place that will provide you decent support, don’t buy from Site5.
I would also suggest that any provider that does not provide phone support is probably a dangerous bet. I can tell you that Site5 is garbage.
Servers and Infrastructure
Site5 is keen to point out that it doesn’t oversell its servers. On VPS plans, customers can choose between different versions of CentOS, although some are less feature-rich than others.
Site5 claims to use datacenters in various global locations. However, during the sign-up process, we were only able to select the central US datacenter location. It’s not clear why Site5 didn’t offer other datacenter locations, because we know this option has been available in the past, with more than 19 different locations on offer.
Support
Site5 has its own in-house support department, which appears to be an English-speaking team. It’s available 24/7. The team takes care of questions about hosting, and also carries out site migrations for new customers free of charge.
Some hosts limit free migration to just one cPanel account, but it’s notable that Site5 goes much further; it will migrate up to 25 cPanel accounts when you first become a customer. It will also migrate non-cPanel accounts, up to a maximum of 10. Again, this is unusually generous. The non-cPanel migration includes databases and files only, so your email addresses and FTP accounts would need to be recreated. For fully managed VPS, this is a soft limit; the company says it’s open to migrating more accounts, if you need them to. Migrations are only carried out Monday to Friday, but service is offered 24/7 during that time.
The company says that its customer support agents fully fix issues themselves, rather than asking customers to implement a change and then test it to see if it works.
Site5 says that it offers a guaranteed response time for its technical support engineers. We couldn’t locate any more details about this on its website, so it would be wise to check with its sales team if you want more information.
Guarantees and SLAs
Site5 operates two satisfaction guarantees. Depending on the type of web hosting you choose, you’ll get either 15 or 45 days to try its service. The 45-day money-back guarantee applies to shared and reseller hosting, while the 15-day money-back guarantee is for its VPS hosting. Domain names and services are excluded from the guarantee.
As a Site5 customer, you’ll also be guaranteed 99.9% service uptime, backed by service credits. As the amount of downtime increases, the amount of credit also increases, up to a maximum monthly credit of 100%. Again, different plans have different credit structures. But you’ll find all of the information on the Site5 guarantee page. If you believe that unplanned downtime has exceeded 0.1%, you’ll need to raise a manual claim with the billing department.
Summary
Site5 markets its hosting packages on flexibility, ease of use, and quality of support, and it has clearly thought about what web designers and freelance developers want from hosting. Getting your data over from your old host should be simple thanks to the ample free migrations, and running a multi-site VPS is made far easier with the included management service. Potential drawbacks include a lack of dedicated server plans, and the fact that server locations outside the US aren’t always available.
Most Popular Site5 Hosting Plans
| hostBasic Web Hosting | hostPro Web Hosting | hostPro+Turbo Web Hosting | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disk Space | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Price | $4.95 / mo (Billed as $4.95 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! | $8.95 / mo (Billed as $4.95 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! | $11.95 / mo (Billed as $4.95 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! |
| Visit Site5 Now | Visit Site5 Now | Visit Site5 Now |
| Plan | Disk Space | Bandwidth | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plus Cloud Hosting Shared | 10GB | 100GB | $20 / mo Visit Host Now |
| resellerStarter Plan Reseller | 50GB | 500GB | $23.95 / mo Visit Host Now |
| Advanced Cloud Hosting Shared | 20GB | 200GB | $27 / mo Visit Host Now |
| resellerStandard Plan Reseller | 80GB | 700GB | $33.95 / mo Visit Host Now |
| VPS2 Managed VPS Plan VPS | 50GB | 800GB | $55 / mo Visit Host Now |
| VPS3 Managed VPS Plan VPS | 75MB | 1TB | $81 / mo Visit Host Now |
Site5 Frequently Asked Questions
- What satisfaction guarantee is offered?
Shared and reseller plans come with a 45-day money-back guarantee. VPS packages come with a 15-day money-back guarantee. Beyond this 45-day or 15-days period, no refunds are available if you cancel.
- Are renewal prices more than the intro price?
In some cases, yes. Site5 offers discounts if you pay in advance. You can lock in your initial discount by paying ahead by up to two years.
- What support options are provided?
Site5 offers email, live chat and telephone support. Live chat is available 24/7, while telephone support is available Monday through Friday, 10AM-6PM EST (UTC -0500).
- What languages are technical support available in?
Support is available in English only.
- What is the minimum contract term?
Customers can pay one month at time, or they can pay in advance, up to two years. Remember that Site5 does not offer refunds beyond the initial 45-day money-back period, so if you cancel part-way through your billing cycle, you will not get a pro-rated refund.
- What space and data transfer limitations are there?
Site5 offers unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth on web hosting plans. Reseller and VPS plans are limited by the disk size and bandwidth of the specific plan.
- Does Site5 offer reseller packages?
Yes. There are several reseller plans, so you can divide and resell web hosting space to customers or clients.
- How do I migrate my existing website?
Site5 offers free transfer of your entire website. The free migration service is limited to 25 cPanel accounts, or 10 non-cPanel accounts. Non-cPanel accounts can only be migrated on a limited basis.
- What control panels are offered?
Hosting plans come with Backstage, Site5’s custom cPanel theme. Reseller plans come with cPanel/ WHM. VPS plans are available with Backstage, but you can choose to use cPanel/ WHM for an extra fee.
- What payment options are supported?
In addition to major credit cards, customers can also pay via PayPal.
- What is Site5’s backup policy?
Server backups are performed on a nightly basis and retained for 7 days. There are also options available to perform your own backups.
- Is Site5 a good choice for multiple sites?
Yes. It offers a number of options for multiple sites. Some of its web hosting plans offer unlimited domain support.
- What development languages does Site5 support?
Its Linux hosting plans support Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails.
- Does Site5 have one-click installers?
Yes. One-click installers for tools like WordPress can be installed via the Site5 SiteAdmin control panel, or through the Softaculous feature in cPanel.
- Does Site5 offer Magento support?
Yes. Magento is fully supported by Site5, even on shared hosting plans.
- Does Site5 offer CDN services?
Yes. CloudFlare support is included.
- Does it have discounted plans for schools and non-profits?
Site5 does not offer free hosting for non-profits.
Most Popular Site5 Alternatives
Starts at:
$3.95
per month
(Billed as $4.95 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate.
Usual price: – Get % off!
Starts at:
$2.75
per month
(Billed as $4.95 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate.
Usual price: – Get % off!
Starts at:
$3.92
per month
(Billed as $4.95 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate.
Usual price: – Get % off!
Ken Wedel`
December 3, 2019
I started with IX Web Hosting in 2007 which was great for years, live phone customer support and 99.9% up time. Then Site 5 purchased IX… Now I’m dealing with customer service that won’t talk to you, won’t transfer you to a supervisor, and wears out the HOLD buttons on their phones regularly. After 13 years I’m shopping for a new service provider.