Web site hosting review. Reliable guide to affordable web site hosting services

The Hostway Corporation was established in 1996 and now this is the one of the five largest hosting companies in the world. With operations in the U.K., the United States, Germany, Holland, Korea, Australia and Canada, Hostway fulfils the needs of over 300,000 consumers and businesses worldwide, facilitating millions of Euros in e-commerce transactions every day. They have a very strong reputation as a full-service web host, specialising in shared web hosting, E-commerce, dedicated server management and domain name registration.

Hostway.com is a company that focus only in web hosting, having a lot of plan from which its price about $ 9 per month, until $ 300 per month.
All hostway's services are divided on 3 categories: Personal, Small/Medium Bussiness and Enterprise. Personal category includes domain name registration, "Family-Sized" web hosting and email-only plan with couple domain-specific email accounts for personalized communication. If your site doesn't need a lot of space and features this category is for you.
Small/Medium Bussiness category contains shared hosting packages from $13.95/Mo to $44.95/mo for growing businesses and commerce projects, including all the tools you need to quickly and easily design, manage and market your site. For serious business like online store you can buy their dedicated server plan for $199.00.
Enterprise category includes dedicated and co-llocation plans especially suited to the experienced Web master. Colocation hosting gives you total control over your server while offering a highly secure data center with top-notch equipment and tier one network access into the Internet backbone.
You can choose wich operating system (Unix or Windows) in each plan, with different price.

HostWay has developed their own custom control panel software called SiteControl (demo) which allows you to personally manage your site anytime and anywhere you have access to the web. SiteControl includes : Domain Name Registration Manager, DNS/MS Record Manager, Centralised Email Manager, Site Samples for Windows, Navigation System and much more.

Email Support Hostway provides 24/7 Technical Support so you can get the help when you need it. 24-hour email support is offered with all plans. Some plans also include 24-hour phone support.
However our tests showed that HostWay's customer service is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes it took just 3 or 4 hours to hear from them, but other times it took up to 2 days to hear from them. Feedback from our visitors shows they are experiencing the same situation.

Support Help Center - contains generall non-technical information for customers who need a step-by-step guide to account setup or a demonstration of how a Hostway feature works.

Toll-Free Support - is provided only with expensive packages. Their toll free number is 866 467 8929.

Hostway has recently launched U.S.E.R support, a new customer support initiative that will further enhance customer's experience. U.S.E.R support promises to provide customers with Universal, Simple, Easy and Reliable phone and email support 24 x 7.

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Online Store

Hostway is one of web site hosting companies who focus their efforts on E-commerce market. Hostway has been an avid supporter of ecommerce since the early days of the Internet. They realize the vast potential of having an online business and make it easy for customers to make their Web sites ecommerce-ready. Hostway provides all features for creating and managing a successful online store such as custom developed Hostway Mershant Manager, Ecommerce Guide, Miva Merchant Shopping Cart and Cart32 5.0 Cart System.

HostWay Merchant Manager

This is an application empowers you to quickly and easily build and manage multi-product online store in a matter of clicks. Merchant Manager offers a simple way to setup and customize an unlimited amount of products by categories, manage inventory, track customer behavior and even develop marketing programs based on your customers' buying habits.

HostWay Web Site Builder

If you have problem with designing you can use HostWay Site Builder to build your web site. This tool is easy to use and allows to design professional looking web sites using their web templates. SiteBuilder is an original tool created by HostWay and can be found inside their control panel.

Conclusion

Hostway has remained focused on the Web-hosting needs of small businesses that usually are not as tech savvy as medium and large organizations. This has led to the development of special instructional tools for publishing web pages, getting domain names, setting up email, and a variety of web seminars on topics such as how to effectively market a web site and make the best use of a web presence. However the $39.95 setup fee also makes the plan unattractive. It is not a good choice for those with tight budgets.

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