70 Blanchard Road, Third Floor
Burlington, MA 01803
1-877-476-9932
PowWeb came into being in 1999 as a low priced shared hosting company. The PowWeb of today owns their own data center in Massachusetts, and hosts thousands of clients from around the world.
Review
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Sales
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I had a few questions about PowWeb’s custom control panel and set out in search of clarification. PowWeb takes sales questions by email, a toll free telephone number and by live chat. I was able to connect with a sales representative by live chat within thirty seconds. The sales team member quickly answered my questions and was eager to assist me in any way possible. Perfect!
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Setup
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I paid for my shared web hosting account by credit card and had an email twenty minutes later welcoming me to the PowWeb hosting family. The welcome letter listed my new username and password, domain details, and gave instructions on how to use PowWeb’s custom control panel, Member Operations Center.
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Billing
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I paid for my shared web hosting account one year in advance and was promptly billed by PowWeb. During my eighteen month stay, I was never charged for services I had not ordered, nor were there any billing errors associated with my account.
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Pricing
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PowWeb offers one plan featuring unlimited space and bandwidth for $3.88/month. Plans must be paid for one or two years in advance. PowWeb’s pricing structure is significantly lower than other hosting companies with similar services.
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Reliability
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I experienced some hardware trouble during my time with PowWeb. Over an eighteen month period I was on a server that suffered from hard drive failure one month and core router failure the next. PowWeb was quick to address both issues and get my website back online. I found PowWeb’s hardware to be extremely reliable and well maintained. Any problems that did arise were fixed immediately.
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Help & Support
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Support from PowWeb can be had by telephone, email, live chat or an online forum. Live chat representatives are quickest to respond, often fixing problems in less than ten minutes. The average wait time for telephone support is twenty minutes. PowWeb’s support team members were always helpful and seemingly well trained.
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Uptime
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I use a premium website monitoring tool to track my websites. My uptime monitor indicated several instances of downtime during my first month’s stay, which meant that I could take advantage of PowWeb’s uptime guarantee. Upon asking for a refund, per PowWeb’s guarantee, I was told that as long as a router has a connection to the Internet, PowWeb does not consider a server to be offline. In theory, this means that all of PowWeb’s servers could be offline, but since they’re physically connected to the Internet, there will never be a violation to their uptime guarantee or Terms of Service.
During my entire stay with PowWeb, I experienced at least one period of extended downtime each month. MySQL databases routinely went offline, indicating possible overselling of services, and my email server frequently failed to send or receive emails.
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Guarantee
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- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 30 day money back guarantee
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Terms of Service
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You can read PowWeb’s Terms of Service online. Highlights include:
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No real uptime guarantee.
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User solely responsible for making website backups.
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$35 early cancellation fee.
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Spamming, Botnets and BitTorrent tracking usage forbidden.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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- Inexpensive
- Excellent sales and support representatives
- Custom control panel
- Free domain name
- Fast account activations and setup
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Disadvantages
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- Custom control panel can be slow and hard to navigate
- Possible overselling of services
- Uptime guarantee not honored
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