PureHost Review – One Size Fits All

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Purehost Homepage

Founded in 1997, Purehost is one of the older hosting companies out there, which is a little unusual, but not new news either because, in this industry mergers become the norm.  If they’ve been in business for years and  earning a profit, typically, they will be bought out.  Purehost is a US based company located Burlington, MA, with more than 20 years of business under them, so they have to be doing something right?

Edit:  It turns out they were bought out by EIG (Endurance International Group) and seem to have kept the same design layout. 

At first, I wasn’t going to cover Purehost because I didn’t think they had anything to offer.   Their website is antiquated (it looks like they haven’t touched the design since the 90’s!) and on the surface, it doesn’t look like they offered much.  As you can tell, I’ve changed my mind and decided to cover them, not because they have been in business longer, but how they present their solution.

  • Why PureHost And What Makes Them Different?
  • Packages
  • User Feedback
  • Final Thoughts

Why PureHost And What Makes Them Different?

For me, I never want to assume anything, but it was pretty hard not to, especially as far as first impressions are concerned.  An old style site just gives me a meh feeling.  I went in for a deeper look into what they had to say and what their offers were.  It turns out, this hosting company IS different than the others in many different aspects.

  1. There is only ONE hosting package
  2. Their knowledge-base and software they use is all up to date from their ticketing system to the control panel they use (cPanel)
  3. They know what they are talking about and don’t just write fluff.  Even under the “About Us” part of the site, their explanation was quite technical.  Here’s what I mean

Architechture Diagram of Purehost’s Infrastructure

From what I can gather, they are redundant from top to bottom and exercise some intuitive routing of your traffic which means people will get to your website through the fastest route.  Without getting too technical, you’d be surprised at how many hosting companies don’t use these methods.

This is where the difference lies.  Put aside the technical advantage and anything else I mentioned above because the real differentiator here is what comes with their ONE package.  Their business model is hosting +.

When you purchase the hosting package, you also get access to marketing extras and the plan is built for business.  Lets be clear, sometimes companies will offer everything under the sun so they can appeal to everyone.  The problem with that is the support is pretty generic in companies like these.  You can’t know everything about every service you offer, which is why you see some hosting companies specialize.  Betcha didn’t think dropbox was a hosting company.  Well, it is and they’ve specialized (file storage only) just like Purehost is an expert in business.

The last differentiator is one that is not mentioned a lot and most people wouldn’t even think anything of it if they saw it, however, it is important, especially for business hosting and that’s being able to use Windows as the hosting server operating system.  If you’re running WordPress, you won’t know the difference either way unless you’re super geeky and like to log into command line (you can do this with Windows server as well), but that probably isn’t your thing.  Windows comes in handy when you are running Microsoft specific products like SQL Database, Visual Basic or .NET (programming). If this framework is necessary for a site Windows hosting is the way to go.

Packages

There’s really not much to say other than they have a single package which they call, the PureBusiness Package and it is priced at $19.95/month or $199.50 per year.  Those are the only payment options.  The package does come with lots and lots of features which was the major part of me deciding to cover these guys in my hosting review.

What comes with Business Plan?

  • 2 GB Storage
  • 50 GB Bandwidth
  • 200 Mailboxes
  • Free Domain for 1 Year

Ok, so you can go anywhere else, pay a fraction of that cost and get a whole lot more.  What you may not realize is that other hosters will give you unlimited everything, then contact you later to pay more because what they do is share all the resources with all their customers.  Think of it like a parking lot that has 100 available spaces, so naturally, you could park 100 cars, but what if they advertised “unlimited spots”?  If the lot was full and the 101st car arrived, you could tell them to park on the side, or in front/behind another car, on the steps, in front of the elevator – eventually, there would be no room left and the biggest car would be charged a higher price.

This is how other hosting companies work.  They will share, share and share even more without scaling and adding more resources (RAM, CPU, Storage).  As soon as things start to bottleneck, they will gauge the biggest accounts on the system saying they have to pay more and for what?  What part of unlimited do these hosters not understand?  This is why PureHost is what I like to call a “realistic host”.  You might pay more, but you won’t run into these problems.

Do you need unlimited?  Unless you’re hosting many many images, you probably won’t need more than 2 GB of storage and 50 GB of bandwidth is way more than you need.  IF, for some reason you are actually reaching that level, you are already making loads of money and if not, then you’re doing something wrong like not monetizing your traffic properly.

You also get a lot more and I mean a lot more.  It’s called a Business Package for a reason and with it you get so so much more.

What I’ve just listed is what comes with the package.  It includes the basic elements that you need to run your business with some advertising credit, a catalog system for eCommerce items (if you have any) and a website builder.  The thing that is a “one up” from other hosting companies is that they won’t just leave you to your own device.  There are additional services that bolt onto this and take you to the next level.

Here’s what else you can get from PureHosts services:

  • My Marketing Services – When you click the link, click on each tab to see more.
    • My Website – Offering Professionally Designed Websites
    • MyWebsite Traffic – SEO Service
    • My Advertising – PPC Management
  • Professional Services – Have you ever had a problem with your website that you just couldn’t figure out or maybe you needed someone to help you with design or a logo to be made.  Look no further because there is a service for this at PureHost.  Here are just some of the things they can do for you.
    • Set up your online store
    • Send out professional HTML newsletters
    • Build forms, databases, blogs and forums
    • Design images and logos
    • Test your site’s usability
    • Perform regular maintenance on your website
  • WordPressLive – You can’t really have this type of business without offering WordPress solutions either!

WordPress extra service packages

Don’t get confused, these aren’t hosting packages, but specialized services offered only to users of WordPress.  Here’s how WPLive can help you:

What is included with WordPress addons

  • Microsoft SQL – If your hosting on Windows, then you already know what this is all about.  This service is an additional $11/month, which isn’t bad since this is an enterprise level solution.
  • MySQL Database Tool – For a mere $2.50/user/month, when you use WordPress, you will already be using MySQL as your database.  This service is not for more databases, but the ability to allow more than 1 user to access your database and this usually happens when you have development going on with your site and you might have a team of developers that need access and it sure beats giving your OWN login information for them to do it.
  • Website Backup Services – Self explanatory.
  • Malware Protection by SiteLock – Saves you time from not having to worry about malicious programs that could cause you data loss.

User Feedback

Purehost covers just about any conceivable need that you could possibly run into for hosting your site so I guess it sounds pretty good, but I wonder what do customers think.

There aren’t that many reviews, but enough to get an idea of the quality of service.  I can find reviews dating back to 2003 and I haven’t found a 5 star yet.  I’d expect to see at least one stellar review, but no luck.  Well, at least they’re consistent!  I think it’s best to show you to get a good idea at some of the reviews left by customers of PureHost.  One thing you’ll notice is that each review is slightly different than the others in that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of common ground.  Some reviews are about the version of software, lack of support availability, data loss, something not updating quick enough and so on.

Here’s the most recent from January of 2018 and it reads:

Review left by long time customer

These are from 2017

Reviews from 2017

I won’t dive any further back then 2017 because lots of things can change in that time and the first review is the best one as it comes from a customer that’s been with them the entire time.  You can’t get a more accurate answer than that.

If you’re interested in giving them a go, there isn’t a big risk as they do have a 30 day money back guarantee.

Purehosts 30 Day MBE

In fact, here is a link to all of their policies and I have to say that they’ve covered everything and I mean EVERYTHING, even the things they don’t offer like Health Industry compliancy (HIPPA)?   Makes you kind of wonder what they’re up to if they have to add disclaimers to services they have no intention of offering.

Final Thoughts

I’ve changed my feelings towards Purehost a few times during this review and it had to do with many factors.  First, the site really needs an update and how can you expect people to pay for marketing services if you can’t even keep up with the Jone’s?  Admittedly, I do like the fact that they cover all their bases when it comes to supportive services like marketing and website design, not to mention professional services which is a staple feature of any enterprise offering, but you would never see this as an option for regular web hosting.

If you know you’re going to need a bit of help with your website, Purehost is probably your best bet or you will need to deal with 10 different people for 10 different things and you end up spending more time fixing and updating your website and less time working on business.  Take heed to the reviews and if I were you, I’d do a bit more research first before committing.  This is a great opportunity to pick up the phone and speak with them one on one to get a better idea of what kind of business they are because it’s one thing to read about them, but it’s an entirely different thing to talk to them and understand the company better.

My all-time favorite host is Kinsta. They are pricey, but freakin’ fast fast and the support is rock-solid. The STARTER plan is great for one website, but I recommend the BUSINESS 1 if you want to build multiple websites

What’s up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!

 

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