Overview

Launched in 1999 by Andrew Te, PowWeb is one of the oldest hosting providers on the internet that offers a single plan package. It offers a one-size-fits-all web hosting package that includes all the necessities of building a site as well sustaining it. Whether you want to register a domain, analyze site stats, manage databases, or host a public-facing web project, all is possible under this single plan.

Although originally founded in Massachusetts, PowWeb’s datacenter is today found in Los Angeles. The company started off as a private entity before Endurance International Group acquired it in 2006. At the time, it had the cheapest hosting plan rates in US and was one of the few web hosts that charged zero fee for administration services. Today, it targets small and medium-sized businesses with an aim to provide a reliable platform to get their products or services to the internet market.

To keep its hosting services on top of the game, it retained its hardware and software engineers who understand the single-plan infrastructure better. The end gain is a company that’s stable, trustworthy, and importantly understands customer needs to the letter. Again, PowWeb uses a proprietary system that employs load-balancing technology.

Essentially, this is a networking breakthrough that creates multiple paths to the internet for web projects. It eliminates the downtime experienced whenever servers are on updates, crash repairs, or offline. As such, it is a company you can rely on as a beginner or seasoned webmaster.

In our PowWeb Review 2018, we’ll explore the hosting packages including services and prices, the features the company offers, its pros and cons, and finalize by checking some of PowWeb FAQs.

PowWeb Hosting Packages

Even with its one-plan hosting package, the network allocations are perfectly suited for any-size web project. The sites run on shared servers with each occupying a separate working folder. The design is so that access to the computing resources is completely independent and orderly. Interestingly, there are no limits as to how disk space or bandwidth the websites consume. The company provides these two resources on an unmetered basis.

Besides hosting, PowWeb provides other complementing services ranging from web design, site locking, email hosting, domain services, and CMS hosting. You can customize the web projects to be served in any of the firm’s server locations. Let’s now explore the packages and services PowWeb offers to you:

Shared Web Hosting

This package is designed to share server resources amongst various users. The servers use load balancing technology which is a solution created to eliminate points of failure. In other words, your hosted web projects have access to multiple paths that relay their data to target destination or audience. It is a solution that’s ideal for critical mission sites, business websites, and other enterprises that fully depend on uptime to achieve their set purpose.

The technology is employed so that there’s redundancy in the system by having physical servers share the load amongst themselves. With this, 100% uptime is achieved.

All users have full access to vDeck control panel which allows management of DNS, creation of subdomains, and reach to the web-based file manager. Also, you can protect the site directories using passwords to control access and increase privacy. In case your site has issues, custom error pages including 404, 505, 403 are available to stand by as the error awaits resolving. The websites in your account, additionally, get automated daily backups and instant snapshots that enhance reinstatement to a former working state. The platform which PowWeb uses for hosting is Unix.

In case you’re using content management systems as the basis for your site, each account has access to script installers. You can install modules, packages, themes, etc. on your WordPress, phpBB, and oscommerce-based web project. The supported programming languages and software in the Unix shared environment include PHP 5 & 7, CronJobs, flash, Midi, and Shockwave. As for the databases, there are two officially supported namely MySQL and phpMyAdmin. The content in them receives daily backups as a prioritized action in the account.

Did you also know you can analyze your site statistics and collect an informed report of its performance? Well, the inbuilt statistics and log manager allow you to collect bandwidth report, access error log files, log site performance in real time, and compare it to competitors in the search engine.

Pricing

PowWeb offers a single plan for the shared web hosting package which you can purchase on an annual, biannual, or triannual basis. The longer your subscription is the higher the discounts in the pricing. For a one year hosting, PowWeb charges $50.16 or $4.18 per month. For two-year hosting, you pay $93.12 or $3.88 per month while for triannual hosting, you pay $139.68 or $3.88 per month. The hosting environment which you get is ecommerce ready. It includes a free shared SSL certificate, inbuilt oscommerce shopping cart, and PayPal payment processor.

Email Services

PowWeb offers email services through Microsoft Exchange which allows for simple management of emails, tasks, and contacts from various devices. With the service, you get to sync content from your email account across all devices which you use. Also, you receive a free desktop license which allows installation of the emailing app on computers. This way, sharing of contact info, communicating with customers, and marketing is simply enhanced.

Pricing

There are three plans for this service:

-          Exchange Basic

This plan costs $155.40 per year or $12.95 per month for a mailbox with a holding capacity of 5 gigabytes. You can choose to pay quarterly at $38.85 if the annual subscription is too high.

-          Exchange Plus

This plan’s asking price is $59.85 quarterly and $215.46 annually for a mailbox with 10 gigabytes storage.

-          Exchange Premium

It costs $104.85 quarterly and $377.46 annually to acquire this plan. The mailbox you get has a total holding capacity of 25GB.

Domain Services

To give a unique identifying name to your site, you require a hosting provider that offers domain services. Now, PowWeb offers this service which allows for registration, renewal, replacement, and sale of domain names. Other associated services include purchase of domain credits, creation of subdomains, automated domain renewals, and enhancement of domain performance.

Domain credits apply to when you’re registering a new or existing domain name. Once you purchase them, they won’t expire so you can use them as long as you wish to keep your preferred domain name. Domain privacy works to protect information entered during registration of a domain name. The info includes you name, phone number, address, etc. which can be abused by telemarketers, spammers, and other undesired third parties. PowWeb’s domain privacy service ensures you retain your domain name without necessarily revealing the personal info associated with it to the public. The company automatically forwards requests to view this info to you so that you can decide whether to share it or not. The service costs $9.99 per year.

Enhancing of domain performance is made possible via premium DNS from Comodo. The service allows you to set DNS servers that relay content via the closest nodes. Also, it uses the caching technology to preserve frequently accessed content in memory. This way, sites load faster and site abandonment by visitors gets eliminated. To get the premium DNS, you’ll pay $7.99 per month or $83.88 annually.

Subdomains are an easy way to host various web contents that you want the visitors to check out. PowWeb allows you to direct traffic to these key pages as long as you registered your domain name with them and you’re on the Unix platform.

Site Locking

Site locking is new service that PowWeb now offers to provide security against cyber-attacks. It helps in scanning for malware, securing sites from blacklisting, and providing a site-lock badge to gain trust from visitors. It blocks suspicious activity automatically and provide notification via the email and control panel of an attempted breach. There are three plans to use this tool-as-a-service in its entirety. These are:

-          Find Plan

On purchasing this plan, PowWeb will scan for malware on a daily basis. Also, they’ll conduct a vulnerability scan on your site and block automated bot attacks if they find any. The plan costs $1.94 per month.

-          Fix Plan

The difference with Find Plan is that Fix Plan automatically removes malwares on top of scanning. The company charges $6.97 per month for this plan.

-          Prevent

It is the most comprehensive plan of them all. It ensures your website is scanned for malware on a daily basis, malwares are automatically quarantined, and traffic to and from your site goes via a restrictive firewall. It costs $38.75 per month to use the plan.

CMS Hosting

Content management systems are increasingly becoming useful in site creation and management. PowWeb offers an optimized environment to host these applications with WordPress having its own set of plans. Let’s now explore what the company includes in this package.

-          WordPress Hosting

The WordPress package comes with two plans namely WP starter and WP Essential. On the starter pack, which costs $3.75 per month, you get a customized control panel, preinstalled themes, and standard support. The site is hosted on a shared server to lower operational costs.

As for the Essential pack, which costs $6.95 per month, support is provided by WP experts and high-speed loading of the site guaranteed by using Solid State Drives. Storage and bandwidth is completely unmetered for all WP plans as well as number of email accounts to create for your project. Registration of the domain name which the WP site uses is also totally free for the first time registration.

Marketing Services

On top of hosting your site, PowWeb also provides marketing strategies and tools to make it known to target audience. Below are some of the subservices falling under this package:

-          Design

Under this service, PowWeb takes care of building the looks of your website thereby allowing you to have more time for money-making undertakings. They have lots of templates and themes to ensure every site they design on your behalf is unique.

-          Search Engine Optimization

This service involves optimizing your site content to contain keywords that visitors search online. PowWeb provides a team of SEO professionals to undertake the task which can be on a new site or an existing one. They’ll polish existing text or completely write original content on your behalf at an agreed cost.

-          Payment Processor Environment setup

Ecommerce sites depend on online payment processors to complete transactions at the point of sale. PowWeb tech team offers to set up the payment environment to ensure your visitors pay securely and you, on the other end, receive money for the service or good you provided. Mostly, they’ll offer to create a PayPal account and link it to your website. Nevertheless, you can have them set up credit and debit card processors as an alternative payment method.

Email Marketing

PowWeb Features

On this section, we’ll discuss the features that PowWeb has in relation to performance, speed, security, customer support, and control. We’ll also check out how its money-back guarantee works and the terms and conditions that govern the policy.

Performance and Speed

PowWeb provides hosting on a shared platform where multiple web projects lie on a single server. Although this is an old-fashioned type of hosting, the company employs various measures to ensure performance remains decent. These include:

-          Load balancing

This technology relies on multiple physical servers that work together by sharing the load to make it lightweight and manageable. PowWeb mirrors site data across its servers so that when one goes offline or fails, the others take over and keep it online. This way, the website will never experience downtime.

-          Custom DNS Management

PowWeb offers Comodo domain name servers at an extra fee. Also, it allows you to enter IPs of your alternative servers at the control panel. The function is to ensure the caching of the domain name which improves site loading speed across various networks.

-          Support for MySQL and phpMyAdmin

These two databases work with most web projects and are extremely effective for data entry. They’re also lightweight and capable of accepting lock keys for data security. Besides, the content on the databases is automatically backed up on a daily basis.

-          Site Statistics Logger

PowWeb accounts come with Webalizer and AWStats which are great site stats loggers. You can use them to collect the bandwidth report, access error logs, and evaluate health of the site across intermittent periods. Basically, the tools are an easy-way to tell how your website is performing since going live.

-          Hosting on the Unix platform

Unix is the operating system which PowWeb uses for its hosting servers. The platform is not only reliable but also very versatile in regards to the tools and languages that it supports. It can handle complex computing tasks, multi-levelled flux in the network, and run modern applications fluidly. Currently, it supports PHP version 5 & 7, Shockwave, Flash Players, and task schedulers including CronJobs.

-          SEO professionals

Search Engine Optimization is the quickest way to advertise your website to potential clients. PowWeb SEO team optimizes your site content and collaborate with the company’s web designers to create a lightweight masterpiece. This way, search engines can easily index your website and rank its URL on the top search results.

-          SSDs for storage

PowWeb runs servers with solid state drives which are highly efficient in storing data. They outperform traditional SATA disks in speed and enhance data integrity reliably.

Security

When it comes to security, PowWeb is keen to implement a number of measures to increase it. The end gain is a public-facing website without the risk of damage and data theft. Let’s explore these security measures, tools, and features:

-          Shared SSL Certificate

A secure socket layer adds encryption to site data during its relay from the server to the browser and vice-versa. This function helps in preventing spying apps or services from accessing sensitive info. PowWeb offers this certificate to all accounts for free although it’s shared amongst a number of users.

-          SiteLock

This tool provides protection against cyber-attacks which are highly prevalent in the modern times. With it, you can scan for malware on your site data, put a lock badge on your URLs, and eliminate possible URL blacklisting instances on the internet.

Also, it will block requests from bots which are used in DDOS as well as locking the back door which facilitates exploitation. The tool works with ordinarily built sites and content management systems including WordPress.

-          Spam Filters

These are included in the email accounts to block malicious messages from telemarketers and spammers. You can set email lists which you trust and also place some addresses on probation for further analysis. The mailboxes use POP3, SMTP, and IMAP protocols which provide pathways that are highly secure for email exchange.

-          Accredited Payment Processors

PowWeb works with PayPal and acknowledged payment gateways to provide an ecommerce-ready environment. Your visitors will be able to use major credit cards and PayPal to pay for the services or goods that you site sells.

-          Data backup

PowWeb takes a snapshot of your site data on a daily basis to restore it in case of loss, theft, or damage. The function is automated and completely free for all their customers.

Control Panel

PowWeb’s default control panel is vDeck which is accessible upon registering an account with them. The control tool uses a web interface to manage various configurations and services within your web space.

With it you can edit domain name servers, view your billing information, manage scheduled tasks, activate script installers, manage files, and access site stats analyzers. Although basic in function, it is very easy to use. Besides, it contains links to the help pages within PowWeb website.

As earlier mentioned, you can activate script installers from vDeck. Essentially, this tool helps in installation of apps, modules, scripts, and services in your website operating environment. This way, you can control how your website behaves when it goes live.

Unfortunately, PowWeb doesn’t support cPanel which is a great alternative to vDeck. Nevertheless, you’ll still be able to manage your account as effectively as you would with cPanel.

Customer Support

PowWeb takes customer service very seriously since almost all its pages have access to the customer support portal. You can reach out to the support staff or get help via email, phone calls, and articles on their knowledge base. Email response is not as fast as you’d expect in a provider its size.

It takes around 15 minutes to get attended to when you further an issue. Calls are instant but sometimes you may have to wait for a few minutes before the support staff attends to you.

One of the most outstanding features that we found at PowWeb is that the help articles are classified into various categories. To name but just a few, they have Account, Database, Domains, Files, Policies, Email, and Scripting categories. You can manually explore each or use the search button to find a topic of concern.

The database holding the help articles is quite optimized judging by the speed which it returns search results. Also, most keywords we search get relevant topics which answer quickly the questions we have.

Lastly, PowWeb boasts a forum with over 20,000 members where you can help from other customers. Although the answers given on the section are not 100% reliable, the provider allows them to be rated by members when they’re insightful.

Money Back Guarantee

PowWeb offers a 30-day money-back guarantee period following the purchase of any account from them. In case you wish to cancel the contract, you’ll receive a full refund of the basic hosting fees. In case you chose to use their free domain name, they’ll deduct $15 from your due amount. The cost covers their expenses of registering the domain name with relevant authorities. But you’ll retain possession of the domain name for a year to use or point it elsewhere.

As part of fair usage policy, the user who wishes to terminate the hosting contract must have used the resources allocated within normal limits. Also, the account must have no history of usage in illegal services within the hosting period. More information on the terms and conditions is detailed in PowWeb’s User Agreement page.

Extras

-          X7 Chat Module

This module makes it possible for instant chats between you and your visitors and amongst themselves. You can easily install it using the script installer which is accessible from the control panel

-          AdWords

PowWeb offers $100 Google, Yahoo, and Bing AdWords to help with marketing on these search engines. Moreover, they list your site on Yellow Pages to increase visibility to potential customers.

-          Weebly Site Builder

PowWeb has no site builder of its own thus it partnered with Weebly to offer the service. The tool allows for drag & drop feature and supports a wide range of web elements from maps, images, videos, to audios.

Pros and Cons of PowWeb Hosting

There are a lot of considerations to make when deciding to use PowWeb as your next hosting provider. This section will outline its pros and cons so that you can have an easy time making a decision.

Pros

-          Fairly decent load speeds

PowWeb’s average loading speed is 769ms which is rather decent for a provider with shared web hosting package only.

-          Powerful security measures

Besides physical datacenter protective measures, this web host provides a secure platform to host any nature site. They have free SSL certs, spam filters, SiteLock, and automated backup system as part of the security enhancement measures.

-          Suitable for beginners

The services PowWeb offers are not only cheap but also standardized for most beginners. It is one-stop place to get all the web mastering components when you’re starting out in the field.

-          Huge and detailed help database

This company offers helpful documentation on issues spanning from account, payment, file management, security, to email services. You can easily familiarize with hosting jargons with their easy-to-comprehend descriptions.

-          Professional experts and support staff

PowWeb hosting has very talented webmasters and customer attendants. They are easy to reach to and make sound communication with in a single session.

-          Easy installation of apps

PowWeb gives access to Mojo Marketplace which a richly-populated store for modern apps and frameworks. The inbuilt installer ensures management is an ever-smooth and straightforward process.

Cons

-          Prices are not constant

On first registration the prices are lower but upon renewal the rates go up.

-          Single hosting type

Only shared web hosting is available. If your website outgrows the resources for this type of hosting, you have no option to upgrade to better performing packages such as VPS and dedicated server hosting.

-          Support for few CMS

PowWeb supports just WordPress out of the box. Other alternative but equally popular CMS such as Drupal, PrestaShop, Joomla, etc. are not on board.

-          Lacks monthly billings

All the services have to be paid on a quarterly, annual, or biannual term.

-          Tough terms and conditions for contract cancellation

Besides being charged $15 for cancellation when using a free domain name, your account must have complied with several other conditions which might be unavoidable.

-          No official guaranteed uptime

Most hosting providers will give a percentage of guaranteed uptime to ensure you’re compensated when you face downtime. PowWeb lacks this official uptime guarantee.

Powweb’s Frequently Asked Questions

-          Besides shared web hosting, which other type of hosting is at PowWeb?

PowWeb only offers shared web hosting and no other types of hosting on its infrastructure. Nevertheless, the package is sufficient for small and medium-sized sites since bandwidth and storage are unlimited.

-          Does PowWeb offer Windows Hosting?

No, at the moment they only offer a Unix environment. The OS works amazingly well with most programming languages and frameworks. Therefore, it will suffice just fine in cases where Windows environment would be suitable.

-          Which server locations will my website have?

PowWeb offers four server locations namely United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

-          When migrating from another provider, will I be assisted?

Unfortunately, PowWeb doesn’t offer migration services. As such, you’ll need to have a copy of the website on your local storage to drag and drop to the company’s inbuilt site builder.

-          How do I built a website from scratch using PowWeb’s tools?

Well, Weebly site builder, which PowWeb partners with, is the easiest tool to use in website creation. As for the content, you can reach out the design and marketing team to help you out.

-          Does the shared server have limits in regard to storage and bandwidth?

Sure, it does. Nevertheless, under normal operation your web projects might not hit that limit. Also, considering the resources are on shared platform, the company will migrate users with heavy usage to more powerful servers.

-          Does PowWeb backup web project files on behalf of customers?

Yes. They have an automated backup system that takes snapshots of the websites on a daily basis. However, custom backup frequency is not available and thus you might need another backup system if PowWeb’s is not as regular as you want.

-          Does PowWeb offer domain name services?

Yes, PowWeb offers domain registration and renewal services. They have detailed the nature of the service on their website.

-          Besides WordPress, can I use sites based on other frameworks at PowWeb?

Yes, but WordPress has an optimized environment on their servers. As for the other frameworks, we might not reliably recommend hosting them on their platform. Besides security concerns, their operational speeds might not be at the optimal level.

-          Must I use SiteLock at PowWeb?