Overview

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.

Beyond Hosting Plans

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

Pre-configured Virtual Servers

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.  

Customized Virtual Servers

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.

Ecommerce Cloud Hosting

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.

CMS Hosting

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.

Ecommerce Compliant Solutions

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.

Dedicated Server Hosting

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. 

Beyond Hosting Features

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.

Performance and Speed

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.

Security

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.

Control Panel

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.

Customer Support

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.

Money Back Guarantee

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.

Extras

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.   

Pros and Cons of Beyond Hosting

Like any other entity, Beyond Hosting has its own share of strengths and shortcomings. On this section, we outline them.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Beyond Hosting Frequently Asked Questions

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?