Started in November 2003, StartLogic is web hosting provider that’s based in Phoenix, Arizona State in the US. It was conceptualized and launched by Thomas Gorny together with his spouse with a vision to get their small online startup business running. Today, it has grown tremendously attracting over 50,000 customers and a bunch of tech savvies who are the majority of its staff. They attribute their success to partnership, networks, and their innate ability find out the exact needs of existing and new clients.

StartLogic and iPower are related since they share a common founder and are also part of the Endurance International Group since 2007. If you’re wondering what EIG is, well it is a hosting provider with over 20 years of service. It has at least 30 hosting brand names under its umbrella with more than three million websites on its hold. It owns other hosting providers that we’ve previously reviewed including Arvixe, HostGator, iPage, BlueHost, and FatCow.

Although it’s part of EIG, StartLogic enjoy a high level of independence with packages and plan prices that are way different from the mother company. As of this writing, the company only offers shared web hosting and VPS packages. Also, its homepage has very scarce information to guests regarding available hosting plans. You have to navigate to other pages to view them which is outright discouraging to window shoppers. 

StartLogic’s datacenter is based in Boston, MA in the USA. Nevertheless, the company doesn’t solely own it as it is a joint project with other hosting providers. The servers are manufactured by Dell, a company reputable for its high-end server machines. The facility enjoys 24-hour security monitoring as well as redundant power options to cover an outage. Unfortunately, StartLogic doesn’t guarantee server uptime just like most EIG companies.

StartLogic Hosting Packages

When it comes to hosting, despite its small size StartLogic has quite a lot in its basket to offer. First it offers the ever-popular shared web hosting and VPS packages. Again, not only can you register a professional domain name for free, but also you have access to its powerful website builder. It also gifts newcomers with a variety of web apps which are accessible on the integrated Mojo Marketplace. The best part is that they issue you with ad credits worth $200 which are usable on major search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. How this benefits you, is the instant ability to push your website up the ranks of these search engines by advertising.

Furthermore, your account has access to Google Webmaster Tools which allow you to assess and improve your web presence on the search engine from time to time. If you wish to also have an email account for your site, you can set these up too from the comfort of your account at no extra cost. The good part is that the email servers support auto-responders and come with inbuilt spam and virus scanners. Excitingly, you can also integrate popular content management systems which allow you to set up ecommerce and blogging platforms effortlessly. In short, StartLogic gives you full control over the kind of business your site purposes on the internet but with a smooth pickup.

In our opinion, this hosting provider will work best for startups and medium-scale online enterprises. Its limited resources and infrastructure are not sufficient for extremely large or busy websites. It also pleases to know that all its packages have a 30-day money back guarantee period with no questions asked. Let’s now review StartLogic hosting packages in detail:

Shared Web Hosting

This type of hosting is StartLogic’s main package with majority of its customers having their websites on the shared servers. So, how exactly does this type of hosting work and is it reliable? Principally, upon creating an account on StartLogic and choosing a preferred plan, a web space is created for you. This space holds your web files as well as any apps or services that you later install on the operating environment. Now, to have these files processed the web server, your web space is linked to a shared CPU, memory unit, and network card, and other hardware resources needed. Sometimes this setup can lead to degradation of performance over a while as more users are allowed to share a single physical server. Also, there’s a huge risk of the “bad neighbor effect” when other users compete for the same resources that your web files are utilizing.

In our assessment of StartLogic, we discovered that the cheaper the plan the more users you share a single server with. So, as you move up the ladder and upgrade your hosting plan, the more resources your website will have for its operation. In this respect, if you are running just a simple website with no much traffic, the cheaper plans will suffice. You might not even notice any significant performance changes in your normal operation. It’s also worth remembering that the size of your web files matter too on the shared platform. So, even a simple website with larger files to serve on its frontend will experience fluctuations in performance as the demand of hardware resources increases.

If prior to searching for a hosting provider you had a registered domain name, you can use it on StartLogic. When creating an account, they’ll conduct a quick look-up on their database for its validity and link it up to the websites you want to serve. Retrospectively, if you have no registered domain name, they’ll assist you to create a new one before you even choose the shared web hosting plan that you want. Albeit domain registration is free, domain privacy is not. Technically, this protects your identity and any other information that might be utilized in reconnaissance of your website by hackers.

The cheapest pricing plans are for triannual subscriptions. If, however, you prefer monthly subscriptions you might have to pay sometimes over five times the value of the longer subscriptions. Nevertheless, activation of your account is instant and they charge no setup fee to get your account working. Also, they include a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt allowing your website to communicate with your visitors’ browsers securely. The payment channels supported are PayPal and use of Credit Cards.

Express Plan

Costing $4.50 per month, this plan is ideal for a personal site or blog. The resource allocations include a disk space of 5GB, a transfer bandwidth of 250GB, and a shared CPU unit. Also, you can only host a single website for your account and one MySQL database. The plan supports inclusion of email and FTP accounts with inbuilt security functions. Unfortunately, for this plan you have to pay $10.99 per year for a domain name.

Pro Plan

This is the most recommended plan for websites that have graduated from the budding phase. It has most of the resources unlimited including bandwidth and disk space. The company gives you one domain name for free and allows you to host any number of websites on your account. It supports inclusion of up to 25 MySQL databases as well as 2500 POP3 email accounts. Mostly, the plan is designed to offer commercial hubs a hosting platform. As such, it boasts a free inclusion of oscommerce and Agora shopping cart, PayPal payment processor, and Starter version of ShopSite.

The pro plan costs $5.99 per month.

Supercharge plan

This plan works best for websites demanding more speeds and resources for quicker operations. It offers a smooth transition from Pro Plan in terms of features and price. It offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and slots of number of websites to host. StartLogic additionally offers three free domain names as well an upgrade of the commercial packages. Your web data is backed up automatically using NetApp snapshot manager and you have a choice of server location. The ShopSite version available for this plan is the Plus version which includes 50 products up from 15 on the starter version. Moreover, you can create an unlimited number of email accounts and even utilize the premium version of the website builders.

This plan costs $8.99 per month.

Other products you can throw in your shopping basket while purchasing any of these plans include:

-          WordPress package

This product is billed on an annual basis at $36 and has all the necessary tools to set up WordPress in your account. It features WP themes, plugins, customized control panel, automatic malware detector and remover, and prioritized support from WP experts.

-          Website Security

This tool costs $19.95 per year and is designed to safeguard your websites against spam, viruses, and hacking attempts. It runs on a cloud-based virus engine and scans web files on a daily basis.

-          Site Backup & Restore

This add-on automatically backs up your data to an offsite location allowing your site to be reinstated to its working state in case of an unforeseen server problem. It costs $1.00 per month.

-          Website Builder

This tool costs #251 per year and allows webmasters to design websites flawlessly and quickly without requiring any programming skills. The builder supports drag and drop functions, contains an image library, and an incredible collection of templates. Also, you can throw in SEO tools helping you to improve the rank of your website on popular search engines.

VPS Hosting

Virtual private servers are a great upgrade option for those websites that have significantly high traffic. Usually, these will be websites that utilize hardware resources 100% of the time thereby needing a dedicated system. Now, StartLogic provides this upgrade in form of virtual units which share a single or a cluster of powerful servers. The setup is such that it allows for scaling or changing of values of the resources by the user. You can choose how much memory your account will be allocated, the amount of bandwidth you prefer, and even dedicated cores of the CPU that will serve your websites and services. StartLogic uses OpenVZ software for virtualization.

The flexibility that the VPS offer mean you can increase the value of the hosting platform by controlling resources in accordance to your specific needs. Again, the resources are somehow dedicated which eliminates the “bad neighbor effect”. Usually, any activity that your account has running doesn’t affect other users sharing the same physical server. Also, you can choose an operating system that works best for your applications. StartLogic supports both Windows and Linux operating systems which have a wide range of web applications compatible with them. Due to the cost of licenses, users of VPS running Windows OS attract a slightly higher cost of operations. Linux, on the other hand, is completely open source and most of its applications are provided for free.

On StartLogic servers, you can either choose to have an unmanaged or managed environment. For unmanaged environments, your account is completely autonomous and comes with privileged/root access. The root permissions allow you manipulate all sections of the virtual system giving you an upper hand on performance and overall experience on hosting. As for the unmanaged environments, it is StartLogic’s staff that carry out the root functions leaving you with only the hosting part to worry about. All the system updates, configurations, and other routine maintenance functions are at the hands of the staff. Generally, this is the kind of a VPS setup you should go for when you’re a novice webmaster. It’s not only easy to maintain but also allows you to deal with the basics which are less time consuming.

Another benefit of StartLogic’s VPS package is the inbuilt support for various SSL certificates. You can choose to integrate Let’s Encrypt free SSL or use one from an alternative provider. The free SSL basically encrypts traffic to and from your web server which ensures your website is safe from snooping and spying apps. Like the shared web hosting package, the VPS plans also include $200 bonus for ad purposes on the search engines.

Here are StartLogic’s VPS plans:

VPSLogic

This is the starter package providing a simple upgrade from the highest non-dedicated shared web hosting plan. It can service a website with an estimated traffic of 25,000 visits a month. The number of domains supported are 10. For hardware specifications, it comes with a single core CPU, 20GB for storage, a memory of 1GB, and 1TB bandwidth. Furthermore, a free version of cPanel is included as well the choice to unlock root permissions or work with a managed system. This plan costs $19.99 per month.

VPSLogic Pro

This plan is ideal for business sites especially the ones with ecommerce services and products. The resource allocations are quite generous and occasionally the company has discounts for the monthly charges. The allocations are as follows: 1.5GB RAM, 1.5TB bandwidth, 2 CPU cores, and 40GB storage. You can also create unlimited number of email accounts with addresses borrowing a part of your domain name. The maximum number of websites you can host here are 30. This plan costs $39.99 per month.

VPSLogic Premium

StartLogic Features

On this section, we shall explore the features which StartLogic put forth regarding control, performance, customer service, speeds, security, and their policy on money back guarantee. But before we get started, we feel like users have very limited options as far as hosting features are concerned. Anyways, here are the StartLogic features in details:

Performance and Speed

When assessing performance, we examine how quickly websites load content to intended destinations. Also, we check into the overall reliability and the server uptime that a hosting provider guarantees. For a start, StartLogic doesn’t have any uptime guarantees although their servers are quite stable on both shared and VPS platforms. Here are some of the features we noted in our test account that regard performance and speed:

Few Units Per Server

The inbuilt server density monitoring software on the cPanel shows the estimated number of active systems in a physical server. Even on the cheapest VPS plan, the company doesn’t exceed 8 VPS units. Although the resources are somehow dedicated, many users on single server would mean quick degradation and frequent downtime during hardware maintenance routines.

Email Autoresponders

StartLogic supports creation of email accounts with autoresponders and forwarders. For scheduled responses on messages the action is almost instant which builds a good rapport with your visitors.

Lightweight Programming Tools

The default Linux environments on both StartLogic’s hosting packages, have PHP, CGI, Perl, Cron, Python, JSP, and Curl already preinstalled. This is a plus for modern applications that depend on these languages and environments to function optimally. The good thing is that most of them are set to automatically update themselves which translates to high compatibility with your web apps and consequently improved performance.

CDN support

Although VPS users have no preinstalled content delivery network, StartLogic infrastructure innately supports inclusion of it. You can install popular ones in your operating environment including Rackspace, Akamai, Verizon, CloudFlare, Amazon AWS, and MaxCDN.

Webalizer and AWStats

These two tools are essential in collecting statistics of the performance of your website over a particular period. StartLogic has them in your control panel allowing you view how your site is faring against its competitors. Also, you can collect other important info on link clicks, search engine ranks, and referrer logs.

OpenVZ Software

This software is not only lightweight but offers high level of security across the virtualized systems. It optimizes the physical server to share resources equitably and instant scalability where necessary. Additionally, it has an error detection service which reports possible hardware hitches before they become system-wide.

Security

StartLogic provides both physical and infrastructural security measures against threats. Here, we explore the major ones:

SiteLock

This cloud-based security solution scans your web files and applications as scheduled to eliminate or block detected threats. It also fixes other vulnerabilities existing in the operating system which would put your web space into risk. StartLogic has this software on all accounts by default and provides optimal configurations on behalf of users.

Let’s Encrypt SSL

A secure socket layer (SSL) guards against spying on data exchange between the web server and the browser by encrypting it. Now, StartLogic offers a free version of Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate which obliges your websites to encrypt data before transferring it to your visitors’ browsers. You can confirm this from the lock icon available after loading your website on a regular browser.

Automatic Backup

StartLogic has a daily backup policy for all the web files sitting on its servers. The idea is to provide a restoration point in case on an unprecedented crisis leading to data loss. Also, you can download other backup solutions from Mojo Marketplace to send the backup images to independent cloud drives like Google.

MySQL Database

Besides being fast, this database management tool is very secure for data storage. You can lock sensitive elements, synchronize data across various devices, and delete archaic records very simply. It is the default database manager at StartLogic

Control Panel

To control your account settings, apps, passwords, backup programs, and other services, StartLogic offers vDeck. It has an easy-to-navigate interface that features tabs and drop-down menus. You can quickly find items that you wish to configure using the search input or simply scrolling on the categorized icons. With it, you have control over four main features irrespective of your hosting plan. These are:

Website management

VDeck allows you to control the number of websites in your account by allowing you to create new sites or delete existing ones. Also, you can access various promotion tools as well as content improvement software including SEO managers.

Email Management

As you’ve already seen, StartLogic allows you to have multiple email accounts in your web space. This control tool can help you configure email servers, set autoresponders, allow spam detection, and mass delete unwanted emails.

Billing Management

Using the account information tab, you can view your subscription status, billing info, make changes to payment channels, or renew your account name. This function assists you keep track of your expenditure on the hosting platform.

Domain Management

This helps you to view existing domain names, add new ones, and check the limit of the websites that you can host in your account.

Customer Service

StartLogic’s support department operates 24/7 but they’re not clear where exactly they can be reached physically. You can communicate with the staff via live chat, emailing, and by telephone. Additionally, you can access the knowledge self-help page where a number of issues are addressed.

The interesting thing about the support page is the organization of help items. They are nicely categorized documenting issues ranging from account management, emails, web files, policies, database configuration, scripting, and website builders. The knowledge base is excellent for familiarizing with hosting jargons, understanding how various features work, and troubleshooting common problems by yourself.

Money Back Guarantee

All StartLogic plans have a 30-day money back guarantee period within which you cancel your subscription and receive your money in full. However, if you registered a domain name with them, they will deduct the registration expenses allowing you to use it elsewhere.

If you decide to cancel the hosting contract after the trial period, you can still receive a refund. However, this attracts a cancellation fee of $35 and you must give at least a 30-day notice of your intention.

StartLogic Extra Features

On the shared web hosting plans, StartLogic provides preinstalled languages, scripts, and application environments. These are useful when your web files have several executables with dependencies needing these provisions. Moreover, they offer web design services allowing you to build a website from scratch using their templates. They have a wide variety of choices covering popular niches including ecommerce, blogging, photo sharing, video streaming hubs, etc.

Also, users have access to marketing credits on popular platforms. You can advertise your website on search engines, social media sites, etc. where potential customers could be. Lastly, every plan has at least one free domain name.

StartLogic Pros and Cons

Although StartLogic has incredible services, it has its own share of strengths and flaws. This section points some of these basing judgement from our own experience.

Pros

Decent Uptime

There are no guarantees whatsoever on StartLogic server uptime. Nevertheless, on our independent tests, we observed a consistent online presence of 99.8% which is surprisingly decent for its shared datacenter.

Impressive Load Statistics

The average load time for a website hosted on StartLogic shared web hosting platform is 440ms. The industry standard is 890ms which puts the web host twice as fast as most hosting providers.

Long Money Back Guarantee

With 30 days to assess the performance of StartLogic as a hosting provider, we feel that’s more than enough time to make an informed decision. The important thing though is that they give full refunds as long as claims are timely.

Affordable prices for most plans

StartLogic has very cheap monthly charges for their hosting services. This is especially observed in their shared web hosting plans which are ridiculously low despite the impressive features that they offer.

Rich Knowledge Base

Even if you don’t intend to have an account at StartLogic, you can utilize their resourceful knowledge base for own improvement. They have nicely researched documentation on various issues affecting clients on their platform and other similar ones.

Cons

Few options on control

StartLogic only offers vDeck as the only control panel on board. Unless you’re using a VPS, you can hardly use an alternative control panel including Plesk and cPanel which are highly popular.

Lack of clarity on site migration

StartLogic has no provision on site migration which is an essential function when your website was already hosted elsewhere. It appears like you’ll have to manually migrate the web files to your web space. This is especially unfortunate when your website already has huge files or at risk of data damage.

Limited Live Chat hours

The live chat works on limited hours forcing users to seek alternative help options which might be inconvenient or perceptible to delays.

StartLogic Frequently Asked Questions

-          How long does account registration at StartLogic take?

Typically, account creation on StartLogic takes under 20 minutes. Ensure that you have all the details ready including billing information. Activation is instant on verifying your account from the registered email account.

-          Must I purchase a domain name at StartLogic for websites I intend to host with them?

No. You can provide existing domain names when registering an account on StartLogic. They’ll verify that it is valid and proceed to link it up to your websites when your web files are ready.

-          Is StartLogic ideal for a business website?

Sure. They have a variety of options as far as business websites are concerned. They provide not only ecommerce tools but also the necessary transaction security that you need. There are even guided steps on using PayPal on your website transactions from within your account panel.  

-          Which are best StartLogic alternatives?

StartLogic is part of EIG which has a range of better alternatives to this hosting provider. HostGator, BlueHost, and Arvixe are very efficient since they have packages for all groups of people. You can have professional or even a hobby site on these platforms at costs lower than those offered by StartLogic plans.

-          What are my options on payment methods?

As of 2019, StartLogic supports payment via PayPal and major credit cards. They recommend renewing plan payment using the method that you provided in your registration for safety purposes. You must be logged in your account to complete a payment.

-          Can I call StartLogic’s telephone number while outside the US?

Yes. The contact number can be dialed from any geographical location as long your network provider supports international calls. The number is toll free in the US but in other locations the charges might vary.