Hostarmada Review: is it worth it? (Evidence Attached)

HostArmada Review

HostArmada is a comparatively new hosting provider in the web hosting industry. It’s a US-based cloud hosting service provider with loads of features.

HostArmada was launched at the end of 2019 and had been growing significantly.

We have been testing their cloud SSD shared hosting service for a couple of weeks and we closely monitored all the website vitals.

In this review, we’ll take a closer look at what Hostarmada offers and how it stacks up against the competition.

Let’s get started!

⭐ Rating: 4.0 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
💲 Price: Prices start at $2.99/month
▶️ Uptime: 99.94%
🏘️ Hosting types: Shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated
🌎 Server locations: North America, Europe, and Asia
👨‍💻 Support: 24/7 live chat, ticketing, and phone
🔥 Coupon: Get 75% with with this link using coupon RUBY25

Pros of HostArmada

HostArmada is a feature-loaded hosting provider; they have experts sitting behind the screens to ensure that your website is never compromised regarding internet visibility. Let’s take you through the Pros of HostArmada:

Website Speed

To begin with, we conducted a speed test. We quickly set up WordPress, populating it with a realistic dummy site that included images and content, to assess its real-world loading time.

The website loaded impressively fast at approximately 388ms – less than half a second.

By search engine standards, any load time under 2 seconds is considered optimal.

Hostarmada Hosted Website Speed Test Using GTmetrix
Link to the website speed test result: https://bit.ly/3OiXp0Q

Following our preliminary assessment, we discovered that HostArmada is an exceptionally reliable and speedy hosting service provider.

Response Time & Uptime

We used Bitcatcha to assess server response times, and the results showed an average response time of around 125ms.

Google suggests a response time of under 200 milliseconds.

Therefore, Hostarmada meets this benchmark.

US (W) US (E) London Singapore Sao Paulo
37 ms 32 ms 110 ms 211 ms 148 ms
Mumbai Sydney Japan Canada Germany
235 ms 172 ms 146 ms 46 ms 121 ms

Link to test result page: https://www.bitcatcha.com/report/bca-5f6afb0c79304c3ab91bfa5187cb1bfd/

Now, Talking about Uptime, Hostarmada claims that they have an uptime of 99.99%.

To put that into perspective, 99.99% implies that your website could experience downtime of 0.01% – roughly 9 hours annually.

Yet, in our several weeks of testing, we didn’t encounter any downtime.

So we reached out to a few users of Hostarmada and found that the uptime in the last 12 months was 99.94%, which is pretty much decent.

(we will update this, as soon as we gather enough data)

Hostarmada Stress Test

In this test, we simulated a scenario by sending 500 virtual users to the website to gauge how HostArmada Hosting manages such traffic.

To our surprise, the hosting service didn’t struggle even for a moment.

This suggests that if your website ever experiences such a surge in visitors, HostArmada Hosting can handle the load seamlessly.

Hostarmada Load Test Result
Stress Test Result for 500 Live Virtual Users

We can confidently say that HostArmada web hosting company has a great future.

Customer Support

Every web hosting company claims that they offer 24/7 live support. However, in most cases, you will end up waiting hours to get a response from their customer support. 

Fortunately, HostArmada support is quite active and responsive. Their customer support is quick and offers reliable solutions in just a few couple of minutes.

live chat support conversation hostarmada

You can also connect the HostArmada customer support to get a few insights on improving your website performance. 

Right now, the customer base of HostArmada is comparatively smaller. In the future, if they can offer such active customer support even with a vast customer base, it would outrank most web hosting companies.

Ease of use

The interface of HostArmada is relatively easy to navigate.

Most of the common tasks like creating email accounts, file management, and WordPress management can be easily done via Hostarmada’s Dashboard itself.

(without even logging into cPanel)

Hostarmada Dashboard
Hostarmada Dashboard

Although with shared hosting, you get the traditional cPanel, where you can manage daily backups, email settings, domains, SSL certificates, databases, and file management.

If you need some additional security features, you can install them in just a few clicks.

On the right sidebar of the cPanel, you can check the statistics of your hosting plan to monitor the performance.

Hostarmada C Panel
Hostarmada cPanel

Money Back Policy

HostArmada offers a 45-day money-back guarantee for shared hosting plans and a 7-day guarantee for VPS and Dedicated Hosting plans.

Note that Setting up the VPS and Dedicated hosting in-cure a one-time fee. If you ask for a refund, that one-time fee won’t be refunded.

If you have any confusion, before buying any hosting plans from HostArmada, it is recommended to connect with the live chat support team to get a better understanding of all terms and conditions of the company.

Free Website Migration

HostArmada technical team offers you free website migration if you switch hosting to HostArmada. There are different limits on website migration based on the hosting plan you opt for:

Start Dock: One Free Website Migration

Web Wrap: Three Free Website Migrations

Speed Reaper: Five Free Website Migrations

Datacenter Locations

HostArmada web hosting company has 9 Data centers across the globe. This broad spectrum of data centers makes HostArmada one of the best global web hosting providers.

HostArmada data center locations are as follows:

  1. Dallas, USA
  2. East Newark, US
  3. Fremont, USA
  4. Frankfurt, Germany
  5. London, UK
  6. Mumbai, India
  7. Singapore
  8. Sydney, Australia
  9. Toronto, Canada

If your target audience belongs to one of the above-mentioned data center locations, you can go HostArmada web hosting provider without any doubts.

Backup & Security features

Most hosting service providers don’t include free backup in their packages, but despite the affordable price, HostArmada offers free daily backups in all its hosting plans.

We tried restoring the website from cPanel, and it went smoothly with just one click.

Took only 5 seconds to restore the WordPress website.

(However, it was a small size website, even if it’s GBs, it will not take much of your time)

Hostarmada Backup Restore

The backup duration depends upon which plan you opt for:

  • Start Dock Plan: One Week.
  • Web Warp Plan: Two Weeks.
  • Speed Reaper Plan: Three Weeks.

You must note that there is no reliable option to trigger a manual backup; if you wish to start a manual backup, you have to contact technical support and need to open a customer support ticket.

Throughout our use, technical support was never stepped in. This is how reliable HostArmada is as a web hosting service provider. 

Regarding security, HostArmada offers all the industry-standard features and protocols. Some security features are Firewall Protection, Brute-Force Protection, and Malware Protection, Web Application Firewall.

Refer to the image for a better understanding of all the security that HostArmada offers.

Security features

Special Features for E-commerce Stores

If you plan to start an e-commerce website, you must use the Speed Reaper Plan as it comes with MemCache Support and is deployed on the Litespeed web server instead of Nginx.

These features will ensure that your website will be reliable enough to handle massive traffic.

HostArmada Hosting Plans Pricing

HostArmada offers different hosting plans, and as per your requirements, you can pick the most appropriate one.

Let’s quickly have a look at them:

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is considered one of the most beginner-friendly hosting. HostArmada offers basic shared hosting at $2.99 per month. 

All the Shared Hosting Plans of HostArmada come with the following complimentary features:

  • Unmetered Bandwidth
  • Free SSL Certificate of all connected domains
  • Daily Backup
  • Unlimited Sub-domains
  • Unlimited Databases

Refer to the Shared Hosting package image to get a better understanding:

Hostarmada Shared Hosting Plans

Cons of HostArmada

High Renewal Prices

Hostarmada Hosting plans pricing starts from $2.99/mo, which is great, and annually for approx $36, but the regular renewal charges start from $11.95 per month.

(3x higher than initial pricing)

However, it’s a common thing in the hosting industry to offer hosting at a low cost on the initial purchase.

The difference in renewal pricing of their hosting plans is enough to justify, but you can always shift back if it’s not a perfect fit for you.

Limited Email Storage

The Start Dock i.e., the basic cloud SSD shared hosting plan has only 750 MBs,  the Web Wrap has 1.5 GB, and the Speed Reaper plan has 3 GB of total email storage.

It is actually very less, HostArmada must provide unlimited email storage, there are a lot of other web hosting companies that offer the same without any additional costs.

LiteSpeed is for limited plans

In the plans section, we understood that the LiteSpeed server is only used for the speed reaper plan.

There are hosting companies like Fastcomet that offer LiteSpeed servers in all the plans irrespective of their prices.

Conclusion

HostArmada is a resilient and quality web hosting company with one of the best shared hosting plans. 

Thanks to cloud SSD storage, they offer a 99.94% uptime and lightning-fast speed. It offers industry-standard control panels and website builders. 

With an easy monthly billing cycle system, you won’t be struggling with the finances as well. HostArmada also offers development hosting for developers and outsourcing hosting for open source web apps.

If you plan to start a WordPress website, we recommend the shared hosting plans or WordPress hosting packages. These are the most affordable and easy to use. 

With the help of the basic Free Site Builder of HostArmada, you can quickly build an essential website. 

If you encounter an issue, you can use the ticketing system or live chat support of hostArmada, which is very reliable.

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