303 S Broadway, Suite 200-341
Denver, CO 80209
1.888.site5.com
Site5.com opened their doors for business in 1999. One of the first four licensed Cpanel distributors, Site5 offers shared web hosting, reseller hosting, cloud hosting, virtual servers and an affiliate hosting program.
Review
|
Sales
|
|
|
Sales questions are taken by telephone, live chat and email. Live chat at Site5 is phenomenally fast! Chats are responded to within seconds, even during the busy rush of weekday afternoons. Phone calls take approximately 3-5 minutes of on-hold time and emails are answered within several hours. I found all of Site5’s sales reps to be helpful and dedicated, easily answering my questions and even offering coupons to me for a free month of service. Excellent!
|
Setup
|
|
|
Signing up for an account involves filling out an online order form and paying hosting fees. I had an invoice in my email inbox within seconds of payment, and my account setup details arrived only a few moments later. Account setup is automatic, so there’s little to no wait time involved. Speedy!
|
Billing
|
|
|
I had a question about my bill almost immediately after signing up. Much to my surprise, Site5 does not take billing questions by live chat, email or telephone. Site5 answers billing concerns only through Backstage, their online ticket system, and only during business hours. Because I’d signed up for a new account on a Friday evening, I did not get a response from Site5 until the following Tuesday afternoon, and that is just far too long to wait.
|
Pricing
|
|
|
Site5’s smallest hosting plan includes unlimited space and bandwidth, room for one domain and the usual bells and whistles for $4.95/month when paying two years in advance. Paying for the same plan a year in advance raises the price to $5.95/month. Site5’s pricing structure is affordable, no doubt, but it would be nice to see actual month-to-month plans available on all of their shared hosting plans, not just the more expensive ones.
|
Reliability
|
|
|
I had no hardware trouble during a two year stay with Site5.
|
Help & Support
|
|
|
Site5 boasts 24/7 support, offering help via a trouble ticket system, live chat, email and telephone. Live chats and calls are answered immediately and support reps are able to answer basic questions, but that’s about it. More complicated tech support must be done by trouble ticket system. Tickets can take as long as five or six hours to be answered, which just seems too slow, especially during unplanned outages.
|
Uptime
|
|
|
My uptime monitor showed that Site5 maintained a 99.94% uptime rating over two years.
|
Guarantee
|
-
99.9% uptime guarantee.
-
45 day money back guarantee.
-
6 hour service guarantee.
|
Terms of Service
|
|
The Terms of Service for Site5 can be read in full online. Highlights include:
-
Clients may not use excessive server resources.
-
Domains automatically renewed unless clients opt-out manually.
-
No pirated software, bulk emailing, adult websites or illegal files allowed.
|
Bottom Line
|
Advantages
|
-
Free domain name with some plans.
-
Inexpensive.
-
30 day free trial available.
-
cPanel custom theme easy-to-use and learn.
-
Great uptime.
-
Ability to choose server location.
-
Free migration.
-
Uses green technology.
|
Disadvantages
|
-
Billing Department available only by ticket system and during limited hours.
-
No month-to-month payment option on some shared hosting plans.
-
Tickets often need to be escalated and therefore cannot be answered by live chat or phone.
-
Tickets can take as long as six hours to be addressed.
|