Site5 web hosting once had a great reputation. Read the rest of the Site5 review to find out whether they still come highly recommended.
- About Site5
- What Makes Site5 Unique?
- Site5 Online Reputation
- Shared Hosting (From $6.95/mo.)
- Site5 VPS (From $64.80)
- Site5 Cancellation Policy
- Site5 Customer Service Review
- Who Should Use Site5 Hosting?
- Site5 Final Review
About Site5
Site5 offers fast and reliable hosting at an affordable price. They target website developers and publishers, but don’t let this fool you. Their shared hosting offers excellent support as well as many features ideal for those who are new to websites and WordPress.
Site5 doesn’t overload their servers like many budget hosts. By not overloading the servers, the websites you host with Site5 will experience excellent speeds and some impressive load times. Beyond those advantages, it appears that things have started to go downhill at Site5 after being bought out by another company.
What Makes Site5 Unique?
Site5 works with professional developers, which means that they need to offer extremely reliable hosting. The company is professional and efficient, with excellent hosting and support.
Site5 also has great speeds for their shared hosting plans, as they make a point of not putting too many websites on each server. They distribute the websites evenly across their extensive data network. With proper distribution of the websites, web pages load fast and on-site features work at optimum speeds. These were all points that helped Site5 stand out. Unfortunately, Site5 was sold to Endurance International Group.
After being sold, Site5 now has many of the slow and unreliable services shared by other hosting companies within the Endurance Group like HostMonster and Hostgator.
Site5 includes many of the features that you would expect. This includes one-click WordPress install, along with other scripts.
Site5 Online Reputation
Considering Site5 market their hosting at website professionals, their online reputation is weak, to say the least. Site5 scores 2 or 3 stars out of 5 in most areas. WhoIsHostingThis.com gave Site5 a score of 3 stars. The biggest complaint with customers is support and server uptime, with several customers experiencing slow customer support and regular downtime.
Site5 was an independent hosting company at one time. They had fast servers and they offered excellent support. This changed when Site5 was sold to Endurance Group. Support is now handled as part of the much larger Endurance Group support network, which has resulted in slow response times. Server speeds are also reported to be slower.
Site5 is not the only company to go through significant changes after being purchased by a larger company. After these independent hosts with quality customer support and service are sold to big corporate groups that centralize everything, the quality of their service suffers.
If you want a shared hosting plan through Site5, you’ll need to pay for at least 12-months in advance.
Shared Hosting (From $6.95/mo.)
Site5 costs more than other budget hosts, but is the price worth it? Big Rock hosts for just $1 per month! All hosting plans come with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. There is a free website transfer service, but no free domain name. The prices listed on the Site5 website are for a 24-month contract, which needs to be paid in advance. If you would like a 12-month commitment, you’ll need to pay extra.
- Host Basic ($108 for 12 months) 1 Website, 10,000 monthly visits, and free website transfer
- Host Pro Turbo ($179 for 12 months) Unlimited Websites, 10,000 monthly visits, and 24/7 Support
- Host Pro ($143 for 12 months) Unlimited Websites, 250,000 monthly visits, and free website transfer
Site5 shared hosting comes with cPanel. Malware protection is available for an additional $49. You will find hundreds of one-click install scripts, including WordPress, Woocommerce, and Joomla, along with some very handy social media scripts. Hosting comes with free daily backups and several guarantees, such as 99.9% uptime. The uptime guarantee is something that many customer reviews seem to contradict.
Overall, these prices look way out of line with “budget” options, but Site5 doesn’t enjoy the same excellent reputation as other companies that charge more for their services.
Site5 VPS (From $64.80)
Site5 also offers fully managed VPS hosting, starting at $64.80 per month. The VPS is fully managed and includes cPanel and OS management. All servers are built on SSD technology. The prices are a little high, but you are getting a managed VPS. If you’re new to VPS, taking out a managed service is a good place to start.
- VPS2 ($64.80) 2 Cores, 2GB RAM, 50GB Storage, 1TB Bandwidth
- VPS3 ($89.10) 2 Cores, 3GB RAM, 75GB Storage, 1.5TB Bandwidth
- VPS4 ($114.30) 4 Cores, 4GB RAM, 100GB Storage, 2TB Bandwidth
- VPS5 ($158.40) 4 Cores, 5GB RAM, 125GB Storage, 2.5TB Bandwidth
- VPS6 ($178.20) 6 Cores, 6GB RAM, 150GB Storage, 3TB Bandwidth
- VPS7 ($257.40) 8 Cores, 8GB RAM, 200GB Storage, 4TB Bandwidth
- VPS8$ ($332.10) 8 Cores, 10GB RAM, 250GB Storage, 5TB Bandwidth
Each VPS comes with one free IP address, with additional IP addresses costing $3 per month. You will also get RAID storage and free SSL security certificates. You are paying for the managed service aspect of this hosting. If you are new to VPS and have limited computer knowledge, a managed VPS is the best option.
The Site5 30-day free trial lets you test out their features before making a commitment. They also offer a money back guarantee for hosting plans.
Site5 Cancellation Policy
Site5 makes several guarantees and commitments on their website. If Site5 fails to deliver, you can cancel your contract and receive a refund for your hosting. The time frame for the refund depends on the plan that you choose. If you have a VPS plan, you have 15 days to cancel. With all other plans, you have 45 days to receive a full refund. I haven’t found any complaints about the money back guarantee.
Other hosting companies offer up to 90 days to cancel!
Site5 Customer Service Review
When Site5 was sold to Endurance International Group, a growing number of customers started to complain about poor customer support, which is a familiar story.
When small companies are purchased by bigger groups, one of the first things they do is close the support department. They will transfer all support to a larger support team who look after many hosting companies.
Even though Site5 once offered excellent support, they now have regular complaints. I’ve contacted the sales team myself and found them to be a little slow, but they did answer all my questions.
The Site5 dashboard is easy to navigate. You also get access to the standard cPanel.
Who Should Use Site5 Hosting?
In the past, before the Site5 sale, I would have highly recommended Site5 to anyone with a website. Following the sale of Site5, there seems to be a lot of negative customer reviews. The negative reviews comment on the same old problems, including slow support and bad server uptime.
For the quality of service being offered, the cost of Site5 hosting is a little high. There are certainly better and cheaper hosts, such as Hub Hosting and Green Greeks, that offer much more than Site5 and at a lower price.
Site5 Final Review
I was looking forward to reviewing Site5. Several years ago, I had a very positive experience with Site5. I found them to be an excellent hosting company with great support. Unfortunately, Site5 was sold and they lost a lot of what made them special, such as fast load times and exceptional customer service.
I don’t like the pricing for the plans offered by Site5. The low price that you see on their website is for a 24-month contract that needs to be paid in advance.
Site5 did have a good reputation and following the sale of the company the reputation has suffered. When I consider the price and online reputation, it’s hard to recommend Site5. There are better hosts out there with a higher quality service and more competitive prices.
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
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