110 East Broward Boulevard, Suite 1650
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
1-877-275-8763
Aplus is one of only a handful of web hosting companies that not only survived the dot-com bust, but also flourished. Started in 1992 by Abacus America, Inc., Aplus began offering internet services in 1995 and hosting in 1998. Acquired by Hostopia in 2009, the Aplus of today offers shared web hosting, web design and marketing services.
Review
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Pricing
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Aplus.net has a very competitive pricing structure. I picked up the Personal Plan, which runs $5.95/month for 15 gigabytes of space and 250 gigabytes of bandwidth. Hard to beat that! Discounts are also available when paying by the year.
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Uptime
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My premium uptime monitor indicated that Aplus met or exceeded their 99.99% uptime guarantee. The few instances of downtime I had were all due to unannounced server reboots and hardware upgrades.
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Sales
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I had a question or two for Aplus and turned to live chat for the answers. I spoke with a representative named Venessa, who not only answered my questions in seconds, but offered up very detailed responses. Wonderful! Aplus offers sales support by telephone, live chat and an online form 24/7.
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Help & Support
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Support from Aplus is available by phone, live chat and an online form. Live chat support, once again, is truly excellent. It’s not uncommon to be connected with a representative in just a few moments. The other forms of support take 12-24 hours. I found online form support to be the most frustrating, as answers often took three or four exchanges to come.
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Setup
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It only takes a few moments to fill out the new account activation form with Aplus and pay for your account. Once I did that, I received an order confirmation by email, followed by the details of my new plan. Couldn’t have gone better!
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Reliability
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My account with Aplus was active for a period of one year. I had no hardware issues during my stay, though I did have a few software problems. Aplus runs an old version of phpMyAdmin, which caused one of my trusty scripts to only work sporadically, if ever. I was told there were security reasons for not upgrading the software. I had the same problem with other software, as well. In full, the hardware at Aplus is top-notch, but they would do well to update their software in a timelier fashion.
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Billing
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I had no trouble with the billing department. I was not charged incorrectly, nor did I have any problems cancelling my account. Aplus accepts all major credit cards.
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Guarantee
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99.99% uptime guarantee
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30 day money back guarantee
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Terms of Service
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You can find the Terms of Service for Aplus on their website. Highlights include:
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Adult images not allowed.
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Hosting accounts are automatically renewed.
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Spamming, storing of files and copyrighted material not permitted.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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Superb live chat support.
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Easy-to-learn custom control panel.
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Free domain with some plans.
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Good value for the money.
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Disadvantages
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Some server software is outdated.
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Phone and online support can be slow.
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No advance notice of when servers will be rebooted or websites taken offline.
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