In previous articles, we discussed about the other web hosts which typical known as Low End Box. Here is Host1Plus review with performance benchmarking report. Host1Plus uses OpenVZ virtualization & has extra managed services. Host1Plus thankfully provided us a free 2GB instance for the testing work. Host1Plus from pricing and offered range of services point of view is not really Low End Box. They uses OpenVZ not KVM or Xen. We discussed about OpenVZ vs KVM before. As because the Host1Plus charges closer to KVM or Xen, it is customary for us to point it. That does not mean, OpenVZ is bad. Indeed, performance of OpenVZ is better sometimes as web server. Security and stability on OpenVZ is not known to be standard for using for certain areas like that of financial web services.
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Host1Plus Review : Service Catalogue Basics
Host1Plus has has regularly updated blog, some good quality guides. We found them from their tutorial on Google search. After login, the beautiful control panel astonished us contrasting with their ordinary web design.
First, their control panel is advanced and quite closer with that of IBM Sofklawyer, if you are not used this type of control panels. Usually that is said Client Area by the hosting companies.
Second, they have advanced graphing, full DNS service with reverse DNS, extra SSL/TLS certificate as add-on, security products as add on, domain services, operating System can be re-installed – a client can do himself/herself all works without the need of opening a support ticket. OpenVZ server providers usually do not offer so many features.
Third, processors, IP address sets, bandwidth, backup – all can be increased on demand from dashboard after ordering. They have support for IPv6. cPanel also available at extra cost. They have IPv6 support.
Forth, we checked for who is the original data center provider. That this moment, it is a reliable known brand. Whether this Host1Plus is their another company, that is unknown but we can see that they are reliable. Moreover, we found that they have tie up with a known DDoS protection service. That indicates the company is used with the latest matters.
Firth and most importantly, Host1Plus offers the basic service as unmanaged. A General Support is obviously available. But they have $60.00/month first plan for basic assistance on server setup and configuration, while $100.00/hourly service is for dedicated support. $60/month for one month should help any user to get a web hosting panel to get installed on their server. This is like what Rackspace provides. Rackspace charges a bomb. Instead of using Shared Servers, new WordPress users can straightforwardly use their $60/month first month service for $4.75/mo for about 700MB RAM instance. Why they will use BlueHost like over promoted shared servers?
Sixth, they can provide servers currently at Chicago, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo Frankfurt and Johannesburg. Commonly used all GNU/Linux operating systems are available – Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, CenOS. We may miss something from our quick lookup, you can check Host1Plus official website for their latest offerings.
Seventh, they have great console from control panel for emergency. Also you can SSH to the instance from that details. Also we have not seen the pronounced limit of load average typical for low end box.
Known Tests for Benchmarking and What We Used Host1Plus Review
Apache JMeter is an excellent tool for stress-testing web applications. It can be used with any web server, not just Apache. ApacheBench is too basic but still used testing tool. WebStone is another known tool. We have not used them as we are not testing for specific works. We used what ServerBear and others use commonly use. This will make your decision to select (or not select) their service comparing with the others.
ServerBear and others use Benchmark score using UnixBench 5.1.3 which itself is indicative of the servers performance when running single, multiple & parallel tasks. Higher scores is better. I/O tested with the dd command :
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1 | dd if=/dev/zero of=sb-io-test bs=1M count=1k conv=fdatasyn |
Bandwidth is tested with checking download speed with CacheFly CDN. The number of uncached random reads per second is tested with IOPing for IOPS seek. Webpagetest is used after installation of Nginx – time to first byte (TTFB) is particular important to note.
Publicly Available Test Result Data Used For Host1Plus Review
We created a GitHub Project for Host1Plus Review (click here to open in separate tab) and distributed the test result with GNU GPL License. You can check the complete copy-paste of individual tests used. In brief the result :
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | [ SYSTEM SPEC ] O/S Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS, x64 RAM 2 GB HDD 3 GB CPU Model Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz CPU Cores 2 [ BYTE UNIX Benchmarks ] (Version 5.1.2) System Benchmarks Index Score (w/ one processor) 1212.4 System Benchmarks Index Score (w/ all processors) 2122.7 [ OTHERS ] Check GitHub Project [ WEBPAGETEST FTTB ] 0.104s |
Overall, test results are honestly beyond our expectation – they shown enough good to be recommended. However, we lack the experience of long term usage.
Conclusion For Host1Plus Review
From other users’ review as long term users, we can not see any reason to say Host1Plus is bad. You can see the tests done by us. 5/5 will be normal rating for total range of services. What is glitch is cost. $14.70/month for 2048MB aka 2GB is towards what Linode or DigitalOcean charges – $20/month is their charge for Xen, KVM machine. Doubt is obvious. But, DigitalOcean and Linode does not provide so many features unlike Host1Plus.
From a neutral point of view, $7/month 6GB OpenVZ server is available in the market, performance is same. But the later is raw service for the advanced users, there is no beautiful control panel, no DNS, no IPv6 cap on load average etc.
Whom we will recommend Host1Plus to use? From 100% newbie users to one who can not afford time or manpower to control own server instances. It is not fully unmanaged without any extra service. The said type of users can read our guides and if fails to follow them can ask Host1Plus for their paid service to install or configure. Is near $5/month for near 1GB RAM too bad? We do not think. Cost of maintaining the infrastructure including manpower is not less. We think, Host1Plus have the complete range of services needed for typical website minus CDN.
Host1Plus Product Whitepaper
Our Rating
Among 28 customers, 21 rated 5/5 from their website data. Here is our rating :
Performance : ★★★★★ (5/5)
Free DNS : ★★★★★ (5/5)
Control Panel : ★★★★★ (5/5)
Uptime : ★★★★★ (5/5)
FTTB : ★★★★★ (5/5)
Cost : ★★★★ (4/5)
Support : ★★★★★ (5/5)
Do you have experience of using Host1Plus? If you want you can give us your feedback on this Host1Plus review as long term user.
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