One shared hosting review

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I wanted to start a blog, so I bought cheap hosting from one. The hosting is perfect for my needs, but the solution has some limitations. In this review I will say what I think is bad, and what my conclusion is. As a whole the review might look very negative, but the conclusion is positive.

Since I didn't know how much hosting space I needed I selected the cheapest hosting plan. What they don't tell you is that a hosting plan also require you to either move or get a new domain. The domains are also more expensive with one than with the typical hosting company, and in addition they have a setup fee. I could accuse them of bad marketing, since they state they are cheap, but to be fair; their with 3 GB of hosting space it is pretty cheap.

Not quite unlimited traffic

One says that they offer unlimited traffic, but this is not a promise without restrictions. The rule is that 1 hit can not exceed 1MB of bandwidth, if so they will shut the site down. So if you want to operate a "download site" my advice is find another hosting company.

By hit they mean looking at a page. So if you have several elements on that page the average between them must be below 1 MB. Some huge images on the same page will make you exceed this, but a web page often holds many other elements, like CSS files, the HTML document itself and other smaller design elements.

Bypass the limitation of 1MB per hit

It would be possible to bypass the limit by using a lot of 1x1 pixel images on each page, but I'm not sure if they would allow it. I have not tried to do it, and neighter will I.

Control panel

The control panel is most likely something the hosting company has cooked together temselves, and as you can see it is pretty minimalistic and logical, and does allow for the most required features.

Features includes administering email accounts, DNS and look at statistics. You can aslo set up a small gallery for your photos and/or a blog with a click of the mouse. They also allow FTP using FileManager, but this require you to have Internet Explorer, which really sucks. I suggest getting an FTP client, like FileZilla (open source).

I don't use the blog that comes with the hosting plan, but instead I installed one based on WordPress. It was no problem to install it, just upload, start the installer and enter the database details.

You also get a cupon to use for Google AdWords if you want to market your site.

MySQL administration

I don't like that they don't allow you to connect to the database using CLI from a remote host, and they don't offer any SSH access, so that leaves out any options to connect to the MySQL using CLI. Furthermore, since they don't support remote access, you won't be able to run a desktop GUI like MySQL administrator with your database eighter.

Instead they have pre installed phpMyAdmin which enable you to do your administering through the web GUI in your browser.

Conclusion about shared hosting from one

This was quite a hostin review, but I think I've covered most aspects of it now. Customer support is very good, fast and reliable, but only through email or chat. Ie: They do not offer phone support.

If you just want an easy solution for your blog, and don't have any special requirements this is a web hosting company for you.

However, if you want flexible hosting, look for something else.

Click here to visit One.