Overall Rating
Features
Price
Customer Service
Reliability
Uptime
Ease of Use

When comparing shared hosting options, what do you look for? Do you want open access to support whenever you need it? Do you want to be able to host an unlimited number of small sites without setting up different accounts? Do you want one-click installations of your favorite CMS or blogging platform? You can get all of that and more if you know where to look. One such option is WebHostingHub.com, which is associated with InMotion Hosting. Learn more about them below.

Features

Here are some key features of hosting packages offered by WebHostingHub.com:

Control Panel: Your control panel with WebHostingHub.com accounts is cPanel.

Uptime: In an answer to their community questions, a WebHostingHub.com representative notes that third party reporting shows 99.98% uptime for their servers. There is no uptime guarantee however.

Support: WebHostingHub.com offers 24/7 support via phone, live chat, and email in addition to offering a thorough online knowledgebase and community where you can review past customer questions or ask your own.

† The $4.95 per month rate requires a three-year up front payment. Two-year and one-year plans are also available at a higher per-month cost.

WebHostingHub.com Pros

WebHostingHub.com targets DIY webmasters and bloggers. They say their goal is “to provide you with a no hassle, no strings attached hosting service at a great price with above par support.” For the most part, that seems to be the case.

For example, WebHostingHub.com offers a wide array of support options for hosting customers. You can contact them 24/7 via phone, email, or live chat for example. And 24/7 phone support is something I consider a must-have in a hosting provider. They also have an online support center that offers a wide array of tutorials on everything from transferring domain names to managing the email accounts you host. You can even access a customer community to review past questions or ask your own of other customers and support staff.

As for the “no hassle” and “great price” parts of their mission, WebHostingHub.com also seems to deliver. While their prices aren’t the lowest you’ll find for shared hosting (starting at $4.95 per month for new customers), their prices are very low for the level of access you get to their support staff. That’s something I consider well worth the cost.

To make your life easier as a site owner, WebHostingHub.com offers one-click installations of popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. So again, they live up to their mission, making it easy for the DIY crowd to get a website online quickly and easily.

Now we have to cover a topic I know some readers are torn on — “unlimited” resources. Some consider this a pro, and others a con. Essentially certain resources are deemed “unlimited,” but others (generally tucked into a host’s TOS) are limited. So you’re never actually able to use any resource to an unlimited level. That would be physically and technically impossible.

On the plus side, if you have several small sites that you’d like to run and you don’t expect them to be resource-intensive, a shared host with these “unlimited” site offerings could be good for you. You won’t be limited by the number of domains you happen to tie to the account. While I now use dedicated resources for my own large network of sites and blogs, I actually started out with a similar “unlimited” hosting account, and it served me well for years.

WebHostingHub.com Cons

Now we have to look at the other side of “unlimited” shared hosting. In this case that includes websites you can host, bandwidth, and disk space. For some readers this is automatically a no-go because offering “unlimited” resources generally means the host is overselling the resources of the server.

That’s done so a host can maximize revenue per server, because not all customers on each server will use all of the resources otherwise allotted to them. In this case, the TOS don’t mention specific limits on things like CPU. But they do note that “scripts should complete execution in 1-2 seconds at most” and that “database queries must also complete quickly, and databases should not be larger than is appropriate in a shared environment.” Personally I’d like to see some specifics here in the terms. People should know exactly what they’re getting before they pay any host.

I do take issue somewhat with one part of the company’s stated mission. That’s where they claim there are no strings attached. I know this is a matter of opinion, but I consider anything other than offering month-to-month services to have strings attached in the hosting industry. With WebHostingHub.com it appears that you have to order hosting for 1, 2, or 3 years at a time. When you don’t know the exact limits of an account, you have to pay for a year or more up front, and the company reserves the right to cancel that account without a refund if they claim you violated those non-specific terms, that’s a problem.

They do offer a 90-day money back guarantee. But in those same terms, they also say the opposite:

“Company may (but is not obligated to) refund to You all pre-paid fees for basic hosting services for the full months remaining after effectiveness of cancellation….”

You can’t have it both ways, so I’d like to see their TOS edited to reflect a single policy upon cancellation. You should also note that when you request the cancellation of your account, the hosting company doesn’t consider that request to be effective until 30 days after its received, at the earliest.

My final issue with WebHostingHub.com has to do with the way they advertise their prices — or more specifically, the way they don’t advertise their prices. It’s bad form to try to sign customers up for something before you tell them how much it costs. Yet I couldn’t find detailed hosting pricing information without clicking the “get started” button, which takes you to a sign-up page. Before that, all you can see is the price of their 3-year plan mentioned on the homepage (without any mention that it requires a 3-year commitment — not even in fine print on that page). Even on the sign-up page, prices only appear after a form to collect customer information.

The pricing issue gets even worse. The fact that your price will go up after the first year (or first order period) is tucked away in the fine print below the section where you choose your package and enter your payment details. Again, this should be much more transparent. I also noticed that the company opts you into a backup service which adds $12 per year to your order. Under no circumstances is it okay to opt customers into an add-on service. Customers should be able to opt into a premium service if they want it. They should never be forced to opt out.

In Conclusion

WebHostingHub.com might be worth considering if you’re looking for an “unlimited” shared hosting account and easy setups for your new sites. That said, I’d love to see the company make some improvements to their own website moving forward to increase transparency on their pricing before pushing people to an order page and more specifically address resource limitations and the discrepancy regarding their refund policy in their TOS.

Note: Information in this review was valid at the time of writing — December 2012. Prices may have since changed. Please visit the hosting company’s website for the most current information on pricing and features.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. The author is not directly compensated by the inclusion of these links, and earns the same regardless of writing a positive or negative review. Web Hosting Directory prides itself on providing objective information and hosting reviews to help readers choose the best hosting provider for their needs.