Superb Internet Introduction

Superb Internet was founded in 1996 by Haralds Jass, a Latvian entrepreneur. Its motto is ‘Ahead Of The Rest’ which reflects its focus on top-notch, premium hosting plans. The company places huge emphasis on its state-of-the-art facilities and robust service and is partnered with HopOne.

Superb Internet claims it was the first to offer name-based virtual hosting and the first to offer domain wildcard hosting, both in the 1990s. It also states that it was the first host to enter the commercial VPS hosting market and the first to offer a 100% uptime SLA on its services.

Its staff are ITIL-trained and are located across four offices in Virginia, Washington and Hawaii, with the main office being situated in Honolulu.

Superb Internet Hosting Plans

Unlike most hosting companies, Superb Internet presents its plans in descending price order. The focus is clearly on dedicated and managed hosting. For the sake of consistency with other reviews, I will run through them the opposite way round: from shared up to dedicated.

● Shared web hosting is available on Linux or Windows. Both are split into three plans. On Linux, GridLite, GridPro and GridMax offer increasing resources, from 20 GB space to unlimited space. All offer unlimited traffic. On Windows, customers can choose Universal, Infinity or CustomPro. Infinity offers unlimited traffic; other plans offer limited resources, and disk space on all Windows plans is restricted (50 GB, 200 GB and 100 GB respectively).

● Reseller hosting is available, but only for clients who want to resell dedicated and VPS plans – there’s no reseller hosting for shared servers. The requirements for becoming a reseller are strict: there’s a minimum order of five units, and resellers have to be audited before they can go ahead. Resellers are assigned to one of four tiers, all with generous discounts available.

● VPS hosting is split into seven plans, and VPS accounts can be provided on Windows or Linux. Customers can also choose between data centres on the west or east coast of the US.

There are a myriad of customisable dedicated and managed hosting plans available on the website – far too many to cover in a quick review. All provide unmetered bandwidth.

Superb Internet also offers a colocation program based on racks or single servers.

Superb Internet Uptime/Downtime

Superb Internet owns three data centres and promises 100% uptime. It claims it was the first company to offer a 100% SLA in the web hosting industry, and has a very good server status page.

In the event of downtime, clients are credited with one full day of free hosting for every hour of downtime. ‘Premium transit’ clients get double this. The company also promises zero packet loss, with an SLA to back this up. For every 1% packet loss, clients can claim a day’s credit: again, this is doubled for premium transit clients.

Equipment downtime is covered by a two-hour replacement guarantee. Should the company fail to meet this target, clients are credited with a day’s credit for each additional two hours.

All data centres are constantly monitored and have multiple redundant connections, power backups and cooling systems with ’no single point of failure’ across the entire facility. Shared hosting customers also benefit from daily backups.

Superb Internet Support

In terms of support, Superb Internet promises that issues will be addressed within 24 hours, although it says many are answered within half an hour.

The company has a knowledge base, multiple phone lines (with extra numbers for dedicated hosting customers) and a ticketing system. There’s no live chat support. Statistics about its response rates are provided for 2011, suggesting that customers rated the support from the company at 8.6 out of 10 overall.

Superb Hosting is proud of its commitment to social media, having launched a SuperbCare account on Twitter. However, I found that this channel was rarely, if ever, used for support. For the period I looked at, August-October 2012, @SuperbInternet was used for firing out tweets about industry news and discount codes, and the latest tweet was three weeks old.

Superb Internet in the News

Superb Internet is a very established host. Despite being one of the top 100 hosting companies, I didn’t find any bad press about its services.

Superb Internet Control Panel

On Superb Internet’s hosting plans, including shared and VPS hosting, the control panel is myCP. This appears to be a custom control panel that’s unique to Superb Internet.

There’s a page on the website which describes roughly how it works: it appears that myCP allows users to reboot servers, access traffic data and perform administration tasks while also providing access to billing and support. The help information about myCP in the knowledge base is incredibly basic and is limited to logging in, changing the login password and creating a new support request, so it’s hard to say how good it is. There’s really very little to go on.

Superb Internet Extras

Shared hosting customers receive a free domain name for two years and a script installer with more than 30 applications ready to go. WordPress, Moodle, Zen Cart, Joomla and Magento are all included within the one-click installer. Customers on shared hosting plans also receive $25 in Yahoo! ad credits.

Superb Internet Money Back Guarantee / Cancellation Policy

Superb Internet’s money-back guarantee is very comprehensive, and therefore, quite complex.

There’s a 30-day money back guarantee covering 100% of hosting fees if the account is cancelled within the first 30 day period. This doesn’t apply to dedicated hosting or domain registration.

In addition, there’s those SLAs that compensate clients with free credit for downtime and packet loss.

The guarantee also has another interesting clause: users can terminate their account without penalty in the following situations:

● Network downtime exceeds 7 hours
● Packet loss exceeds 5%
● Latency exceeds 20ms
● Server repairs causes downtime of more than 24 hours

All of these stats are measured across 30-day periods.

Superb Internet Summary

Superb Internet is clearly a top-end host aimed at corporations. Its history and grounding in the industry speaks for itself, and it clearly has a number of very high-profile clients who rely on its services. The sheer number of hosting options – and the focus on expensive dedicated and managed hosting – is an indicator of the type of clients Superb Internet attracts.

However, support options are lacking, even compared to low-cost hosts. Live chat is offered by many hosts now, yet Superb Internet don’t appear to have a live chat facility. The knowledge base is also very scant on information about myCP, which is a shame, particularly since cPanel and Plesk aren’t offered, yet very technical subjects are covered in detail. I also found it a little odd that its Twitter support is championed and yet the account is barely used.

As far as massive hosts go, Superb Internet are up there with the big players, largely because they have the network infrastructure to back up those super-impressive SLAs. The type of clients who will choose them may not care about the control panel or social media support, but both are weak points that are worth bearing in mind if you’re comparing Superb Internet with another premium host.