Category Archives: Hosting Reviews

Review: Zyma Hosting

It’s a new year, so it’s time for a new review for my trusted hosting companies and yep you read it right – I’m doing one today for Zyma Hosting. For the record, they’re one of the hosting companies I’ve been with for about 2 years or more (but on different hosting accounts)

Zyma Hosting

Zyma Hosting

About the company

Zyma.com launched in 2010 is quickly becoming the No.1 choice for web hosting services on the internet. Our multi-award winning web hosting package offers the most attractive and comprehensive features for one the best prices on the internet.

Okay, I copied that – truthfully but I dug up my emails and saw that I first had my hosting account from Zyma Hosting way back January 2011. So meaning to say, I’ve been with them 2 years indeed. It was that time that I was very problematic with one of my hosts. I can’t remember where but I’ve probably read about them somewhere Web Hosting Talk then I signed up after hours of research in the said forum (or I maybe confused where I heard about them) but needless to say – would you believe after my purchase I also won a hosting account with their contest! (Giving me a couple of accounts! That was on different servers)

I was hosting back then a minor website, then after some time I decided to host a few major websites. Some time my second year, there were a once or a couple of downtime with their server. I was pretty nervous because they weren’t updating us, but later found out they were working hard on bringing up our websites. Fortunately I had back-ups so I had to move away some of my sites from there – but wait, there’s more!

Ever since that said down time, I must say they’ve improved because honestly - Zyma Hosting is one of the most stable host I’ve been with. And I guess I trusted my hunch the first time I signed up with them. If you would observe, they have a very professional website layout. It’s not just what you see from the home page as well because they also have a customized client area which makes handling accounts seamlessly.

Then come again, I won another hosting account with another of their contest, I also signed up another hosting account for a shop I was supposed to build up. I kept track of my websites using Uptime Robot and among all my sites under Zyma Hosting were always up about 95-100%.

And now, my accounts are to expire this May but I’m thinking of renewing or getting a new account because what I like about Zyma Hosting is the stability or uptime. But here, I decided to make a rating for most of the important points!

Customer Service

Their customer service is superb, whenever I have a question it gets a decent answers and they answer within 24 hours. However, if you are pretty impatient you’ll probably get nowhere. I liked their live chat! I remember asking them a few questions and it was answered right away. So, I give their customer service 8/10 (just had to minus a bit because of the mishap from before, but all is  good now!)

Uptime Stability

I wish I could give it a 10/10, but I’ll have to give a 9/10. There’s no such thing  as 100% uptime after all and all websites can go down from time to time. But based on my experience with them I think there were only a couple of downtimes and that’s for my 2 years with them. Imagine that!

Limitations and Features of Account

As usual of hosting companies, you are given a cPanel to use with ease and so much more. Their cPanel also has many features and premium softwares compared to others so it’s a thumbs up for me especially when I tried to use Cloudflare! So, that’s thumbs up! My concern with their service however is that add-on for websites is a bit limited. At current, they only let you have 3 add-on domains. But you know, this is also a precaution because some users tend to use up too much of what they have causing abuse to the server. I totally understand this, there’s no such thing as unlimited in this world and limited is better because it gives you better performance. I know this as a hosting reseller myself :)

Another of my concern is with the usage of nameservers. From a friend, I heard her account got suspended because she was not using the nameservers as Zyma Hosting had given. They have this strict rule that you need to use given nameservers for your domain. Now, I don’t know why that is really but there are some people who like using their personal nameservers too so that may conflict if you’re one of those and if you’re hosting your domain on a different server while hosting others with your account with them. Needless to say, it really isn’t much of a deal. Overall, I’ll give them another  8/10 for this.

Pricing

Pricing for the first year of a shared hosting account is 4.95 GBP or 8 USD or so.For the uptime they have, I really wouldn’t complain for that and for the features you can get with an account with them. However, on the second year I feel it’s a bit pricey. I always end up signing up for a new account whenever I’m having second thoughts with renewing with them – which usually happens every time I win a hosting account (which I hope I can do again maybe)

Website Interface/Website Management

I add this to let you know how unique their website is made. They have a customized client area as well as a ticket area which isn’t your typical WHMCS. Not really sure what they use but it’s one of the reasons I find them appealing, even their live chat service. And they also have a friendly live chat representative and website interface. 9/10 is my rating for this!

Payment Modes

You can pay with Paypal, the most convenient and also other payment gateways which is really hassle-free. So that’s 10/10!

 

Up to this point, whenever someone asks me of a good shared hosting company I always mention Zyma. It’s only a shame I never got to tell them to add up my email to get referrals (I probably have made about 4-5 friends sign up but I don’t tell them to put my email) that could have been months of extension with great Zyma Hosting :)

Zyma Hosting also throws fun contests via their twitter which can even win you hosting accounts! I’ve won twice now so there’s no doubt how interactive they are as well with their customers. Their twitter account even tweet tips for web development and web design which I usually read as well.

 

Overall, to me their uptime is great and you’ll be hassle free. Just remember to make your own back-ups anyway since that’s still important whether your host is awesome like Zyma or something else! I hope this helps!

My other new host: Network Panda

Despite the fact that I own my own reseller accounts, I still choose to host some of my sites to other hosts because I want to avoid the headache of having to suffer when you have all your sites in one host. Thus also the reason my reseller hosting accounts resides in different servers, I really research on my hosting providers and when I’ve felt the ‘hunch’ I give them ago. So far, with shared hosting sites I haven’t had much of problems.

But I’m going to transfer in a bit to a new host from my beloved Zyma. If you must all know, I’ve been with them quite some time now and I host there some personal websites. However, their renewal for the hosting is quite out of my reach. So, I’ve been hunting down alternatives at WebHostingTalk as usual.

There are many offers, Crocweb, HawkHost, Geekstorage, StableHost – which I all want to try, however, they have this sort of contract thing that even if you pay monthly your account needs to be there for three years and if not they require making a call which I’m don’t particularly like (this is with StableHost) but I know these are good companies.So I went on for days until I found a post by Network Panda.

Please don’t laugh when you find out that one of the reasons I chose them is because I remembered my best friend who was a fan of pandas. But anyway, so far, my beginning is great with them and I hope it will go on and on.

I saw their host IPs as well posted over their thread so I tested which went good with my ISP and voila, I made the right choice! Thing is, it instantly propagated on my end unlike with my resellers and I also got to install WordPress smoothly. Yay for me. Now I just need to do my back-ups and restorations by tomorrow, I’m going to put up one of my busy sites there as it has a really good plan for bandwidth and the diskspace is also just as good.

So, this is to a new adventure here and I hope Network Panda and my sites will be friends for a long time :)

Prestonhost acquired by Bigbrainhost

Hi everyone! I know this post is somehow late but it’s due to my epic schedule from work. Heh :P Anyway, it’s about my old host Prestonhost of prestonhost.com.

On November 11, 2011 (wow that’s 11/11/11 isn’t it? such a coincidence) I received an email saying that they will be acquired by Bigbrainhost (bigbrainhost.com)

My stay with Prestonhost was really great. Except for some problems and there were times that I had to talk to a customer representative that doesn’t seem to know what she was doing. But Faris was an awesome person and really does the best for his customers. I guess partly their downside is their 3-day-refund.

But anyway, so far Bigbrainhost isn’t so bad although I’ve a few unanswered tickets. They also migrated us to a different server (one of my favorite servers :S) But it’s okay except for FTP issues.

Anyway, overall comparing, I think the only thing I am missing from Prestonhost is that they really replied faster. But I’m hoping there won’t be problems with Prestonhost!

So much for that, I just wanted to share my thoughts about this event :)

Host1me Web Hosting Review

This post has been on my drafts since July 12, 2011. Yeah, that’s how lazy I am lately with blogging but I’m a bit into mood lately so I’m doing this little by little.

So, here’s my review for Host1me. My site is no longer hosted by them, but I know I had to let the world know more about this hosting website.

Host1me - Your Hosting Solution

Host1me for a new hosting company isn’t so bad. The service is great, whenever you’ve got problems expect a good response within a few hours up to 1 day. It is being managed by professional web designer Menjil Villalobos which happens to be a good friend of mine. He’s also a graduate of computer related course and good in programming I believe.

He wanted to try out hosting and I must say he did good. During my stay with Host1me, there were only very few down times which was about 1 minute to 5 minutes. But for some reason there was just some problem happening (during the time before I left). I also had to save some bucks $$ so I had to transfer my website to my own hosting site.

Anyways, their hosting may be pricey – but I must say it’s all worth it! The cPanel also have R1soft which is a pretty neat add-on although I was not able to use it because there were some issues fixed at the time.

For now, it’s for you guys to judge. I will recommend them to you for Host1me is pretty good in terms of up-time and customer service.

I was hosted by them for about 2 months. I was going to post in WHT but I feel like posting here first. I haven’t been active in WHT lately. I might get addicted to offers there XD And oh, just in case you’re curious – Host1me is in no way scam at all. They’re legit and a good web host especially for those who need excellent up-time :) If given the chance, I’d love to be hosted by them again but for now I need to save :3 So that’s for those who are wondering if Host1me is scam in some way. They’re real and the owner is really an approachable person too.