HostUpon is a Canadian privately-owned company based in Toronto. It was founded in 2007. This host might not be very well known worldwide, but it claims to host 50+k websites for 10k customers in more than 120 countries.
HostUpon positions itself as a reliable, user-friendly web hosting provider with excellent customer support. But should you host your website there? Let’s have a look at HostUpon reviews and features in detail.
HostUpon Pros & Cons
The advantages of this provider outnumber its disadvantages. The latter seem to be very few. However, pay attention to the first one — it may be necessary. We’ll get back to it later in this HostUpon review.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
|
Unlimited bandwidth and storage
Free domain name registration and transfer
Free website migration
Free website builder
SSD servers
30-day money-back guarantee
Unlimited websites on Business and Premium plans
Green hosting servers (energy-efficient hardware, energy star appliances, recycling, etc.)
|
SSL certificates and backups are not available on lower-price plans
Smaller plans are overloaded with features
|
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| Characteristic | Information |
|---|---|
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% |
| Server response time | 846ms |
| Support options | Phone, live chat, tickets |
| Hosting plans | Shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated servers, reseller, cloud |
| CMSs | WordPress, Joomla, Drupal |
| Features | Unlimited bandwidth and storage, 30 money-back guarantee, free domain, free website migration |
| Server locations | USA (Seattle, Dallas, Washington D.C.), Canada (Toronto) |
| Starting price | $ 2.95 a month |
When to Use HostUpon
The provider is suitable for hosting most web-projects. It definitely has everything bloggers, or small businesses might need. Easy WordPress installation, a large amount of available software, and a drag-and-drop website builder make HostUpon the right choice for beginners. Besides, middle-sized and large businesses can choose from various VPS and dedicated server plans.
When Not to Use HostUpon
This host doesn’t have any crucial disadvantages. However, if you are not ready to get SSL certificates, make backups yourself, and don’t want to pay extra for it — look for some other provider.
Moreover, if you have a complex website requiring top loading speeds, HostUpon may not be the best option. The same if your target audience is far from North America, where its servers are.
HostUpon Performance Features
All packages include unlimited SSD (Solid State Drive) disk space. Such disks are much faster than traditional HDDs (Hard Disk Drives). The difference in speed is most evident when the server’s disk has to work with many input and output operations.
The access speed of SSDs is not limited mechanically. They don’t have to rotate platters and shift read heads to find a specific piece of information. Thus, if data is not distributed sequentially but randomly, SSDs perform much faster than HDDs.
HostUpon Speed Test Results
Testing loading speed is crucial to access a web hosting provider. Slow sites disappoint visitors. If loading a website takes more than a couple of seconds — they just leave. Such sites get lower rankings from Google, so the number of new visitors dwindles.
As HostUpon hosting reviews suggest, it isn’t ranked among the fastest web hosts. Nor does it make any claims about the loading speed on its site. We’ve researched this host using three of the most popular speed test tools. Thus, we have ensured the objectivity of our review.
| Test | Average Loading Time |
|---|---|
| GTmetrix test | 3.0s |
| Pingdom test | 1.32s |
| PageSpeed Insights (Google) | 6.23s |
The results of PaceSpeed Insights tests are disappointing. However, GTmetrix and Pingdom provided figures, which are not excellent, but good enough. We conclude that, on average, HostUpon is somewhere in the middle of the pack. In other words, you won’t have too many troubles with the loading speed. Nonetheless, you should not expect anything extraordinary.
HostUpon Uptime Guarantees
Uptime is another critical metric. There is no use to have a website, which is always down. Such sites lose traffic, their Google rank, as well as advertising revenues plummet.
A lot of top web hosting providers offer their clients uptime guarantees. Such hosts promise to give a refund if they fail to meet some standards. And HostUpon seems to be one of them. However, there are some “buts.”
Firstly, the provider doesn’t specify the refund it offers to the client. “HostUpon is not responsible for any downtime caused by client’s error. HostUpon makes no express or implied warranties with respect to the services it provides” — its Terms of Service page says.
Secondly, a 99% or 99.9% uptime guarantee may sound grand — but it isn’t. Many providers offer such a benchmark. The industry standard of real uptime is as high as 99.95%. Some HostUpon hosting reviews point out that this company meets it with 99.99% uptime.
Nonetheless, the historical data is scarce, and more extensive research is required to support that claim.
HostUpon Server Response Time
We’ve already tested an average loading time. It indicates the speed with which the website data goes to the user. However, some sites may have a lot of images or videos, which affects loading time. To provide a more comprehensive picture, we tested HostUpon with Bitcatcha to measure a server response time.
HostUpon got an A+, which is a great result. Its servers responded in less than 0.23s to the requests from all over the world. However, the response times for North America are much better than for Europe or Asia. Pay attention to that fact if your audience is in the latter regions.
HostUpon Site Migration
Moving all website data, domain, and emails from one provider to another may be challenging. HostUpon offers free site migration to make the transfer easier.
The whole procedure is quite simple. Place your order on its website and fill out the Website Transfer Form. You will be required to specify the URL of your website, the name of your old host, your control panel, username, and password for your account.
From this point, the migration specialists will take on the migration. Once they are finished, you can test the site and, if everything is OK, cancel your old account.
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Go to Hostupon hostingTypes, Features, and Hosting Pricing
HostUpon provides a wide variety of packages, trying to satisfy any customer. The list includes shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated servers, reseller, and cloud hosting plans. Here are some details about each type of hosting.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is the cheapest and the most popular type of hosting, meeting basic demands. The HostUpon prices for such services start at $2.95 a month.
All plans include unlimited storage and bandwidth. Business and Premium options allow clients to host an unlimited number of websites and use unlimited email accounts. Note that an SSL certificate and backups are included only in the most expensive Premium plan.
WordPress hosting
Like many other providers, HostUpon offers specific hosting plans for WordPress, the most popular content management system. However, even casual examination reveals that it is just a marketing trick.
WordPress plans are no different from shared hosting plans, which include one-click WordPress installation.
VPS hosting
VPS is a step up from shared hosting. You get more resources, which is useful for medium or large websites. The cheapest VPS hosting plan from HostUpon costs almost $50 a month. You can fine-tune your server with the help of cPanel and WHM Solo.
Besides, all plans include full root access and the ability to restart and reboot it. HostUpon also promises its VPS-clients Premium Bandwidth. It means a 1Gb/sec connection on one of three multi-gigabit network backbones.
Dedicated Server Hosting
Dedicated Server Hosting for large web projects. You have a server at your disposal, which ensures maximum resources. At the same time, it is the most expensive type of hosting. HostUpon’s prices start at $175 a month.
The host claims to use IBM Servers and IBM storage area networks, including the latest Intel chips. However, the HostUpon dedicated server reviews are too few to provide information on how it influences the performance. All servers come pre-configured with useful software, such as CentOS, PHP, Curl, Apache, MySQL, etc.
Cloud hosting
Cloud hosting provides the most scalability and flexibility. The data is stored on various servers so that you can pull the resources from different places.
The least expensive Cloud-25 plan starts at almost $25 a month. It has limited bandwidth and a restricted number of MySQL databases and add-on domains. All cloud hosting plans include Cloudflare CDN, which offers more performance and security. The provider claims that the CloudLinux technology it employs ensures the best performance for your site.
Reseller hosting
The name of this type of hosting implies that you rent storage and bandwidth and resell them. It is useful mostly for aspiring web hosting companies and developers. With HostUpon, you get at least 15GB of disk space and unmetered bandwidth. The most basic plan costs around $20 a month. You can manage your account with WHM and offer your clients their cPanel accounts.
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All of the HostUpon shared hosting servers are protected by Imunify360 security software developed by Cloudlinux. Imunify360 utilizes herd immunity and the six-layer approach to protect customers from all sorts of threats. Those layers include:
- Malware scans in real-time;
- Intrusion detection;
- Advanced firewall with greylisting;
- Server kernel patching;
- Web apps sandboxing;
- Website reputation management.
Imunify360 has mod security ‘rules’ that are updated daily. If a user has failed login attempts to WordPress, email, FTP, or cPanel, his IP address will be blocked within a specific time. It is a temporary block. If the user completed the Captcha challenge, his IP address would be unblocked and added to a temporary whitelist.
Each HostUpon’s VPS or dedicated server comes with LFD and CSF firewalls. It also has protection against brute-force, a real-time virus scanner, and mod security.
Support
HostUpon provides customer support via live chat, phone, and tickets. You can send a trouble ticket 24/7, even on holidays. The provider claims that typically you will get a response within 10min.
Note that the phone and live chat options aren’t available around the clock. You can call HostUpon from 9 am to 5 pm EST and chat with them from 4 am to 10 pm EST.
The provider is proud of having an in-house support team. “Our entire team works from our Toronto office, which means dedicated support from people who care. You can’t buy that, you have to create it”, — says HostUpon on its website.
The experts confirm the efficiency of HostUpon’s support. The response time is short; usually it is measured in minutes. Moreover, the support staff is quite helpful.
HostUpon Quick Facts
| Fact | Information |
|---|---|
| Website migration | Yes |
| Free features | Website migration, domain name, website builder |
| Control Panel | cPanel |
| Email accounts | From 10 to unlimited |
| Bandwidth | 100GB to unlimited |
| Webspace | 15GB to unlimited |
| CDN | Cloudflare |
| Hidden fees and clauses | To cancel the renewal, you must give written notice 30 days before the renewal date. Once a renewal payment has been paid, you will get no refunds. Premium SSL certificate will cost you at least $79.95 a year as an add-on. Automated daily backups will require almost $50 a year extra |
HostUpon Review: Do We Recommend It?
Yes, we do. HostUpon isn’t among the top web hostings in the world, but it is good enough. The conditions of its uptime guarantee aren’t clear. However, HostUpon customer reviews and prolonged presence on the market suggest that this provider can be considered reliable. The loading speed is satisfactory.
HostUpon offers a wide array of packages so that most customers can find a suitable one. Such freebies as domain name registration and transfer, website migration, drag-and-drop website builder are nice to have. SSD servers, unlimited bandwidth, and storage for shared hosting plans are essential advantages.
The prices are quite affordable, but you should be watchful for costly add-ons. Sadly, basic plans don’t include an SSL certificate or auto-backups. However, that is the only obvious disadvantage. Besides, you can get your money back if you decide to quit within 30 days.
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HostUpon seems to be a good choice. However, the competition is tough. Look at some options before making your choice.
- Bluehost — one of the largest web hosts in the world, which also has excellent WordPress options;
- A2 Hosting is renowned for its loading speed. It is suitable for beginners, offering a website builder and numerous WordPress options;
- Hostinger offers the most affordable hosting for small businesses. Its discounted prices begin at $0.99 per month. This provider has a multilingual support team with offices around the globe;
- GreenGeeks is also an eco-friendly web host. It has shared WordPress and VPS hosting plans. The websites of its clients are claimed to be 300% green.
