Beyond Hosting
Hosting Plans
4
Starting at / per month
49.99
Reviews
0
Hosting Plans
4
Starting at / per month
49.99
Reviews
0
Launched in
2007, Beyond Hosting is an Ohio based hosting provider that terms itself as a
firm built and run by geeks for geeks. It was founded by Tyler Bishop, an Enterprise
Infrastructure Architect and Justin Oeder, an OpenStack Network Architect. The
two reside in Cincinnati where also Beyond Hosting’s one datacenter is located.
The other datacenter is located in Amsterdam in Netherlands acting as a
mirroring hub to serve the European traffic.
Unlike other
hosting providers, Beyond Hosting focuses in managed hosting solutions with
packages that mainly offer virtual private server hosting. The company
primarily specializes in growing medium-scale or large online enterprises and
businesses. With their 100% managed virtual servers, they offer what appears
like a concierge-like service for business-oriented groups and individuals. As
such, this web host is not preferable for a tiny hobby site but rather entities
that have outgrown shared hosting platforms. It is also a perfect fit for
anyone looking to have more control over their account and web space
configuration. In short, if your web project has already attracted a
significant following, Beyond Hosting is a company that you ought to consider.
In this
Beyond Hosting review, we’ll explore its hosting packages plus pricing, analyze
its features, then point out the pros and cons, and finalize by answering some
of the frequently asked questions. But before that, here are several facts
about the web host that are worth mentioning.
i.
Before
September 2018, Beyond Hosting had a package similar to shared web hosting.
Unfortunately, the management began phasing out the hybrid servers that offered
that kind of hosting and promised to eventually move all customers on the
managed virtual servers.
ii.
The
company’s managed virtual servers refer to what is typically known as Virtual
Private Servers (VPS). The independent units that they allot to customers upon
purchasing an account are similar to the virtual server machines that you’d
normally purchase on a web host offering VPS hosting.
iii.
Beyond
Hosting has no separate Reseller Hosting package but some of its plans are cheap
enough to buy and resell. The only shortcoming is that you’ll have to acquire
elsewhere the specialized reseller management tools. They are not inbuilt as
you would find in packages of hosting providers offering Reseller Hosting as a Package.
iv.
In
case your business or web project outgrows VPS hosting, you can upgrade to
using dedicated servers which are available at great rates.
v.
The
firm’s services are fully managed meaning all system administration functions
are carried out by the staff on your behalf. Unmanaged packages have quite
advanced features and might not befit an entry level webmaster.
Even though
Beyond Hosting’s main product is Managed Virtual Servers, they have a wide
variety of accompanying business solutions. Some of these have no fixed fee and
will highly depend with the system resources that you opt for. Here is a list
of the packages that Beyond Hosting offers:
-
Pre-configured
virtual servers
-
Customized
virtual servers
-
Dedicated
servers (bare metal servers)
-
SSL
Certificates
-
Ecommerce
Cloud Hosting
-
Content
Delivery Network
-
PCI
Compliant Solutions
The package
includes virtual servers whose resources are fixed similar to a setup that
you’d find in a shared hosting platform. It offers four levels of support based
on a customer’s preference and experience. These will come handy when deciding
the level of service that your business needs. So, the four support tiers are:
i.
Basic
ii.
Essential
iii.
Complete
iv.
Enterprise
Basic Support
Under the
basic support, the system administrators assist you in configuring the server, adding
an SSL certificate to your website, setting up protection against DDOS, data
migration, and complying with PCI regulations if your entity will employ major
credit cards for processing payments.
Essential Support
This is the
most preferred tier since it covers basically all you need to get any website
started on the internet. The kind of assistance offered includes SSL
installation service, server monitoring, PCI compliance configuration, backup
services, and server deployment at initial run or after updates. Importantly,
you get cPanel, which is a web-based control panel to manage your preconfigured
virtual server.
Complete Support
The kind of
assistance you get under this tier somehow resembles what Essential Support
offers. Nevertheless, the monitoring and backup services are done on an hourly
basis. It works best for entities that highly rely on uptime to remain relevant
in business. Also, with extra security and complete protection against DDOS
attacks, it is a great upgrade when Essential support doesn’t suffice.
Enterprise Support
This is for
users who want services that go beyond what the rest of the Support Tiers
offer. Mostly, these will be large enterprises with complex product lines that
work well with custom solutions.
Preconfigured
Virtual Servers feature a complex setup module that includes load balancers,
firewalls, secure file storage, database server, web servers, and a virtual
private network. All these work together to place your web project securely on
a public facing interface. The main benefit of this package over the rest is
that you don’t have to worry about system configurations. Also, you can hardly
exceed the system resources allocated to your account while running your
operations normally.
The
preconfigured virtual servers are managed. In other words, they receive
security monitoring, daily backups, 24-hour support, regular software updates
and occasional hardware upgrade. In case you want any changes made in your
hosting environment, you have to request the staff to make these adjustments.
These are
virtual servers whose resources are scalable and dependent on user preferences.
It is the perfect package for people looking to tune their operating
environments differently from the options that the preconfigured virtual
servers have. Its main benefit is that you can upgrade or downgrade the
resources flexibly from the control panel. It allows you to pick memory
allocations, CPU cores, bandwidth, and disk storages that suffice in your
current business standing.
For the CPU,
the options available include 1, 2, 4.8,16, and 24 processor cores. Memory
allocations for your system can be anything between 1,2,4,8,16,32,64, and 128
gigabytes. As for the storage, Beyond Hosting uses Solid State Drives (SSDs)
whose storage sizes range between 20 gigabytes and 1 terabyte. Like the
preconfigured virtual server package, you can pick any of the support levels on
the four tiers namely basic, essential, complete, and enterprise. The prices
for plans in this package are variable or put otherwise, dependent on the
resources that you choose for your operating environment.
This is the
package that Beyond Hosting dedicates for online commercial entities handling
high traffic and payment authorizations. Each web space is designed in a manner
that allows access to a cluster of web servers running on cloud technology. This
design allows websites using this package to handle up to 5000 visitors per
day. Practically, it is popular for users running ecommerce stores such as
OpenCart, WooCommerce, and Magento. The solution highly utilizes the expert
prioritized support and at the same time provides a scalable PCI compliant
environment that’s necessary for online shops.
The ecommerce
cloud infrastructure has in place load balancers, firewall, web servers, a
database server, and a management server that supports inclusion of a VPN
software/configuration. The firewall is the last layer between your website and
the internet which functions to protect your web space from unauthorized access.
The good thing with this package is that you can opt for managed hosting or a
private unmanaged environment. Also, the deployment of your ecommerce website
to a live session is almost instant. You don’t have to wait for days or weeks
to have the operating platform ready for hosting.
Your website
will have access to CloudFlare web application firewall on this package.
Essentially, this addition relays your website’s content to the server that’s
closest to your visitor’s geographical location. Also, it monitors the requests
made to your site to drop suspicious ones which could lead to a denial of
service attack. Combined with managed hosting which takes care of updates and
deploys other security measures, the ecommerce cloud hosting package is very
safe for business.
The websites
using this package tunnel traffic via a network with a bandwidth of 10Gbits/s.
Also, the user has access to WHM or cPanel control panels which are handy at
managing the applications or settings that the web project uses. Luckily, the
account has root permissions so you can customize every section of operating
system and manage the virtual server more reliably. As part of support, Beyond
Hosting automatically scans viruses, malwares, and patches security threats
more readily to protect the business entities from possible losses and consequential
damages.
ECOM 100
This plan is
designed for young commercial hubs with around 1000 visits per day. It features
two web servers, which you can scale, a database server, a file server with NFS
storage, and a management server for control functions. Also, it comes with a
site staging platform as well as a single firewall layer for security. It costs
$499.99 per month.
ECOM 200
This plan
handles websites with an average traffic of 2000 visitors per day. It offers
three web servers supporting auto-scaling, a load balancer supporting inclusion
of proxy servers, scalable database server, and a single management server. It
costs $999.99 per month.
ECOM 300
The plan is
designed for websites with around 3000 to 4000 visitors per day. It features
five web servers, a staging platform, a file server with NFS storage, a cluster
of database servers, and a load balancer supporting inclusion of multiple web
proxies. The asking price is $1499.99 per month.
ECOM 400
This plan is
designed for websites with average traffic of 5000 visitors a day. The web
space in this plan is equipped with seven web servers, 2 load balancers each
with a set of proxies, a caching server from MemCache, a cluster of three
database servers, and a single staging platform for testing sites before going
live. The asking price is $2499.99 per month.
Beyond
Hosting also supports content management systems like WordPress, OctoberCMS,
and Joomla. The frameworks, which are extremely popular for site development,
are optimized on the company’s virtual servers to handle a daily traffic of
500k. Good news is that they can auto-scale to accommodate unforeseen spikes in
traffic in case of a post that goes viral on your blog site.
The web host
readily provides updates on the server level for the CMS and applies necessary
patches to repair vulnerabilities. Also, it provides ready access to an inbuilt
app store where themes, plugins, and other essential CMS add-ons can be
obtained. Luckily, users of this package can integrate web proxies to assist in
serving data nearer target locations. Also, the package includes scalable
database servers which are capable of compressing data to optimize storage when
space becomes a limiting factor.
The content
management systems sit on virtual private servers sharing space in a single
powerful machine. The setup is such that there are fewer units for every
physical server with communication between them strictly restricted. This
design enhances privacy and optimizes physical server’s resources to dedicate
performance to every unit independently and fairly.
Beyond
Hosting doesn’t have specific prices for their plans since users can scale
resources flexibly to suit individual needs. Anyways below are the pricing
plans and their features:
WPC 100
The plan
offers three web servers, a single database server, a load balancer supporting
a web proxy, and a file server with NFS storage.
WPC 200
For this
plan, you’ll get three web servers, a load balancer tunneling traffic via
multiple web proxies, a single file server, and a cluster of three database
servers.
WPC 300
For this
plan, they allocate 5 web servers, 2 load balancers, 3 database servers, and a
single file server with NFS storage.
WPC 400
Designed for
high traffic sites, this plan comes with 7 web servers, 2 load balancers, 2
file servers with NFS storage, and a cluster of three database servers. It
allows the user to set auto-scaling of web servers.
This package
is built for customers who are in fields where data security is a top priority especially
in commercial hubs. It also is applied to the websites using content management
systems such as Joomla and WordPress. They audit the package every few months
to remain compliant with regulations by inspection authorities. Beyond Hosting
holds several industry certifications from SSAE 16 type 1 & 2, SOC 2, HIPAA,
PCI, and EU-US Privacy Shield. Lastly, this service allows you can integrate
Office 365, Google Suite, and other data sensitive software on your website.
Compliance Auditing Organizations
SOC 2
This service
organization reports on availability of integrity, security, privacy, and confidentiality
by hosting providers. As of December 2018, audit of Beyond Hosting to issue
this compliance certificate was conducted by Brown Smith Wallace. The firm
passed the audit test and was deemed to have the best internal practices in
place.
SSAE Type 1 & 2
This body audits
measures and controls placed over security and information technology. Type 1
audit involves assessment of physical security measures and disaster recovery
plans. Type 2 involves actual testing of controls covered by Type 1 audit and
reporting that necessary controls are in place and functional.
HIPAA
This body
assesses healthcare controls in the tools and technology a web host has in
place. Beyond Hosting datacenter and infrastructure is fully compliant and as
such usage of their services is safe to the environment.
PCI/DSS
This
organization assists web hosts in designing an infrastructure that is safe to
process cash transactions. The certificate is very essential especially for a
web host that plans to offer platforms where commercial websites will sit.
This type of
hosting is perfect for users who’ve exceeded the capacities that the virtual
private servers offer. At Beyond Hosting, they term it as bare metal hosting
since you actually get a whole physical server with dedicated resources to run
your operations. The main benefit of this kind of hosting is that the resources
are completely at your disposal to utilize them in whatever business you have
in mind. Also, the company is very generous with the specifications that each
dedicated server offers in relation to the asking prices.
Beyond
Hosting guarantees 100% uptime and a consistent performance thanks to the dedicated
team that monitors the servers 24/7. What’s even impressive is that they
dedicate expert support to customers using plans in this package. They have
over 250 technicians in Red Hat Linux, Cisco, and Windows who can be privately
hired when you own a busy enterprise.
Moreover,
the servers are optimized with multiple web servers including Apache 2.4,
Multi-PHP and LiteSpeed. In case you wish to migrate your data from other
hosting providers, this service will be offered free of charge irrespective of
the data size of the project you’re moving. If after setting up things, you
wish to share data across several servers that you have purchased, you can
create private networks. The data you exchange won’t eat into the bandwidth
allocated to your system. Also, the web host allows full root access to your
system.
Beyond
Hosting charges $100 one-off fee for setting up the servers before building the
system for you.
M620-1
This plan
costs $225 per month and comes with Essential Support for server management. It
offers a system with an 8-core Intel Xeon E5 CPU, 64GB ECC RAM, 7TB bandwidth,
cPanel, Softaculous Installer, 240GB SSD storage, and 10G networking
technology.
M620-2
With its
asking price set at $374 per month, this plan offers a machine with two Intel
Xeon E5 CPUs with a total of 16 cores, 64GB RAM, 7TB bandwidth, 24/7 server
monitoring, WHM/cPanel control panels, and 240GB SSD storage.
M620-3
This plan
charges $473 per month for a system with 12-core CPU, 128GB RAM, 7TB bandwidth,
and connection to a 10G networking technology.
M620-4
With its
asking price going at $623 per month, this plan has the best specifications for
the system it offers. The dedicated server had 128GB RAM, two Intel Xeon E5
CPUs with 24 cores, and an SSD based storage of 240GB. On top of that, users
enjoy daily backups, 24-hour prioritized support service, and a total bandwidth
of 7TB.
| Plan Name | Disk Space | Bandwidth | Admin panel | OS | Core | RAM | Core Speed | IPs | SSH | Backups | Managed | CPU | Guarantee | Location | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32G | 210GB | - | WHM,cPanel |  |
8 | 32GB | - | 1 |  |
 | |
8 vCPU | |
  |
$ 249.99 |
| 16G | 150GB | - | WHM,cPanel | |
4 | 16GB | - | 1 | |
| |
4 vCPU | |
|
$ 149.99 |
| 8G | 125GB | - | WHM,cPanel | |
2 | 8GB | - | 1 | |
| |
2 vCPU | |
- | $ 99.99 |
| 2G | 40GB | - | WHM,cPanel | |
1 | 2GB | - | 1 | |
| |
1 vCPU | |
|
$ 49.99 |
Despite
specializing in dedicated and VPS hosting solutions, Beyond Hosting does a
commendable job in respect to the features it offers to its customers. Here, we
shall review these features categorizing them into respective classes such as Performance
and Speed, Security, Control Panels, Customer Support, and Money-back
Guarantee.
Beyond
Hosting is one of the few hosting providers that only focuses on medium and large
enterprises. As such, its infrastructure is designed to handle large traffic on
a day to day operation. As of 2018, its average latency stands at 202ms which
is way better than what competitors its size offer. As a matter of fact, on its
website it compares its average speeds to bigger web hosts including HostGator,
GoDaddy, and BlueHost which it beats by double.
Other
features influencing its fast server speeds and better performance include:
CloudFlare CDN
All the
websites sitting on hybrid, virtual, and dedicated servers have an inbuilt
CloudFlare Web Application Firewall. This addition is designed to monitor the
interaction of your web projects with target audience. CloudFlare is also a
content delivery network which helps in relaying data to its destination via
the shortest path. Your websites therefore load faster across various regions which
is an edge when looking to be credible to your visitors.
LiteSpeed and Apache
These two
are debatably the best web servers on the internet. Beyond Hosting offers
Apache as the default web server while LiteSpeed acts as a complementary web
server whenever Apache misbehaves.
Cloud Hosting
Most
websites on Beyond Hosting servers enjoy load balancing from a cluster of
servers functioning together. As such, the company promises 100% uptime which
is an excellent assurance for site that cannot afford to be offline.
Analytics
If you want
to monitor clicks to your website, you need a high speed analytics program that
reports accurately and frequently. Beyond Hosting allows you to monitor traffic
via Webalizer which generates periodic graphs and tables to collect performance
statistics. You can also assess how much value your paid advertisements are
adding to the popularity of your website.
Web Proxies
Traditionally,
web proxies have been utilized in handling traffic on behalf of a server to
increase reachability and reliability. Beyond Hosting supports web proxies on
the ecommerce packages which depend on reachability to audience to grow.
Independent Units
From September
2018, Beyond Hosting phased shared hybrid servers and began migrating customers
to managed virtual servers. Now, users enjoy independence of the virtual
servers, which despite sharing physical server resources, can be scaled to
optimize performance.
From its
physical resources to its virtual infrastructure, Beyond Hosting has a decent
number of measures and features that enhance security. Let’s explore some
below:
Managed Servers
Albeit there
are a few users who prefer unmanaged servers, by default Beyond Hosting offers
to manage servers on your behalf. They patch vulnerabilities, apply server
software updates, and take care of critical server configurations. These
functions if improperly handled could open up loopholes through which
unauthorized attackers would use to exploit.
Multiple datacenters
Beyond
Hosting has a datacenter in Netherlands and Ohio. Backups are stored on both
centers for ample redundancy and recovery in unforeseen disasters.
SSL Certificates
Beyond
Hosting offers Standard and Wildcard SSL certificates which support a wide
range of domains and subdomains. Standard SSL certificate goes at $59 and can
be integrated on even websites developed out of content management systems.
Wildcard SSL certificate costs $199 and can be installed on multiple websites
and their subdomains.
Expert Support
On its bare
metal plans, Beyond Hosting employs Windows, Cisco, and RED hat Linux
professionals configure servers. The team additionally monitors, optimize
performance, and mitigates risks on servers.
Beyond
Hosting offers cPanel and WHM as the default control panels. CPanel is a very
popular due to its compatibility with various hosting platforms and ease of
use. WHM, on the other hand, allows users looking to resell services to have an
easier time managing their account. Both are capable of scaling server
resources, backing up site data, managing websites hosted on the web space plus
their files, giving access to root consoles, configuring domains, setting up
firewall rules, and viewing collected site statistics.
If you have
an unmanaged server, you can install Plesk, ZPanel, ISPConfig, Ajenti, and
other control panels that you’re comfortable using. CPanel and WHM tend to be
slightly costly although they’re inherently supported on Beyond Hosting’s servers.
Only the basic version of cPanel is offered for free by this web host.
Beyond
Hosting offers customer support both on its website and via other platforms
such as social media. You can check availability status of various subdomains
and hosting platforms from their system status page that updates automatically every
few minutes. Other than that, the company offers customer service via live chat
portal and on the ticket submission section.
In case all
you want is to view recent developments or trending topics in the hosting
industry, they have a company blog with lots of helpful information. Also,
their social media presence is strong on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Sometimes on live chat, responses on technical questions take too long to be
handled. As such, ticket submission is your sure channel for reliable resolving
of issues. Responses through it take at most 10 minutes.
Beyond
Hosting offers a 45-day money back guarantee on all its hosting plans. The good
thing is that there are no commitments during the period. Therefore, they
refund 100% of the amount spent subscribing to a plan. However, there are
services where refunds do not apply. These include money spent purchasing
domain names, software licenses, SSL certificates, and any other service that
is not hosting related. Express refunds are only applicable when Beyond Hosting
makes an error in billing a client. In other cases, your claim must be
well-founded or have an account that fully complied with terms of service.
Softaculous Installer
This
software is useful in installation of applications, themes, and other in-site
modules. It supports batch installations and uninstallations with ability to
set permissions for various applications.
Like any
other entity, Beyond Hosting has its own share of strengths and shortcomings.
On this section, we outline them.
Focus on high-performing hosting type
Beyond
Hosting offers VPS and Dedicated Server hosting which are very reliable for
medium and large scale entities. Its infrastructure is capable of hosting sites
with over 500,000 visits in a day.
Fair Rates
Specialization
in few packages allows it to set prices that are fairly below rates those of
other competitors. Again, you only pay for the resources that you need with the
inbuilt scaling capability on every account.
Unlimited domains
You can host
as many websites on your web space as the space allotted to you allows. Also
considering the resources are completely dedicated, your web projects won’t be
competing with those of other users. In other words, Beyond Hosting gives you
complete control over your hosting environment.
Popular control panels
cPanel and
WHM are popular control panels which you might have used in the past on another
hosting provider. Inherently supporting the two allows both resellers and
private users to benefit in terms of control.
Free migration
Planning to
migrate from another web host to Beyond Hosting? The firm employs a team of
experts to make the transfer process less painful as possible. Luckily, the
service is completely free.
High bandwidth allocations
The
bandwidth for even the cheapest plans is insanely high which means high
performing and quick loading websites.
Free domain configuration
Although
Beyond Hosting charges customers who are purchasing domains, they configure it
on your website for free. Even if you bought the domain from another provider,
they’ll still set it up for free on your website.
Great redundancy
With
multiple datacenters and automated backup services, it’s almost impossible to
lose data. For large corporations, they can customize the frequency of backups
to ensure possible risks are non-catastrophic on their business.
Protection from DDOS threats
Beyond
Hosting offers CloudFlare WAF which blocks suspicious traffic therefore
averting possible DDOS attacks.
Lacks hosting packages for startups
Beyond Hosting
is for users with a decent budget for web hosting. Their packages are slightly
expensive for any non-monetary use or websites still on the startup phase.
No express guarantee on uptime
Although
Beyond Hosting promises 100% uptime, there are no clear compensation assurances
in case the servers don’t deliver accordingly.
Does Beyond Hosting offer traditional shared hosting
package?
Not anymore.
Initially, they offered that kind of hosting on hybrid servers but have since
2018 phased out the service. Now, they only focus on virtual private server and
dedicated server hosting.
Is Beyond Hosting’s Managed Virtual Server
hosting worth consideration?
Yes, if you
have the budget for it. Usually, a small, non-commercial website will work best
on even shared server platforms which Beyond Hosting lacks. But if you want
more control over your sites or web applications, the managed virtual server is
a great consideration. It allows you to utilize the resources in operating
environment at maximum. In short, the main gain is a high performing websites
or application.
When can I use VPS hosting?
VPS hosting
is ideal when your web project exhausts or outgrows shared resources which are
common in traditional web hosting platforms. The virtual private servers have
scalable resources in terms of storage size, memory, and even CPU cores.
Ideally, you only pay for what adds value to your business.
Can I move my website from another web host to
Beyond Hosting?
Sure. Beyond
Hosting offers migration services for free. All you have to submit are login
details, number of websites you want to move, and the package plan that you
prefer to use once your files are on Beyond Hosting servers.
How fast is Beyond Hosting from other hosts?
Its latency
as of 2018 stood at 202ms which is far better than the average which stands at
749ms. Again compared to its main competitors BlueHost and HostGator, which
have latencies of 956ms and 505ms, it’s inarguably a superior web host.
How long is the money back guarantee at Beyond
Hosting?
It lasts 45
days after subscribing to any Beyond Hosting’s plans.
What are great alternatives of Beyond Hosting?