Hostwinds Review

With top-tier uptime, a user-friendly setup, excellent support, and a bevy of helpful features, Hostwinds is an excellent option for small and medium-sized businesses. It has levels of hosting types, with the most prevalent and affordable being its tiers of shared hosting plans. It offers tight security, such as SSL and advanced monitoring, and it makes setup easy, from flipping the switch to migrating over existing domains.

Championing flexibility, excellent uptime, and enough choices to have a best fit for just about everyone, Hostwinds web hosting stands among the best web hosting servers out there. Not only does it have tiers of packages, but it has separate hosting abilities broken up into shared, VPS (virtual private server), dedicated, cloud-hosted, reseller, and WordPress-specific hosting.

Hostwinds has everything you need to launch in one place. Image source: Author

While most needs can be satisfied with the shared Basic plans, it is nice to have various options to scale and growth your business. There are several features available so you can make your experience as comprehensive as you like. Plus, with amazing support and uptime guaranteed at 99.99%, it's hard to go wrong.

Who is Hostwinds for?

Like most of our hosting site reviews, Hostwinds is very well suited for small and medium businesses. You likely won't need the fancy, high-end servers available to larger enterprises, so the shared plan more than provides your necessary resources for basic and customized webpage hosting and marketing.

Hostwinds' features

Far exceeding basic hosting service capabilities, Hostwinds has several upgrades and add-ons that you can use to customize a hosting and site management experience that best suits your own needs.

Website building

If you haven't already built your small business website, Hostwinds offers a Weebly integration to get you started. By having your journey of making a website integrated with your host, you can really lean into efficiency. Plus, as we note in our Weebly review, Weebly makes building and managing webpages very user-friendly.

Weebly is directly integrated into your Hostwinds dashboard. Image source: Author

Hostwinds software.

Cloud hosting upgrade options

Hostwinds has a variety of server types available for hosting. One of those is cloud hosting, which is best for maximizing efficiency by spreading your resources across multiple servers, giving you an advantage in power and backups. This hosting option does, of course, cost extra, with packages starting at $4.99/month and ranging up to $328.99/month for the most expensive plan.

WordPress hosting

As WordPress is one of the internet's largest webpage builders, Hostwinds follows other website hosting companies' lead in offering WordPress-specific plans. You can install your WordPress CMS directly on the Hostwinds servers, including its specially optimized servers. These plans start at $3.29/month for a single domain and also include unlimited storage and regular data transfers.

Domain name

If you haven't registered a domain name yet, Hostwinds includes that option for free.

Excellent uptime

Hostwinds' servers are exceptionally reliable, with the company itself even having a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

Advanced security

Not only does each plan and hosted site come with a free SSL certificate for data protection and encryption, but Hostwinds also offers advanced website monitoring for just another $1.75/month. This feature keeps an eye on your site 24/7 and automatically alerts you to downtime while also submitting a support ticket on your behalf.

Hostwinds offers additional monitoring that can be added with one-click on the dashboard. Image source: Author

Hostwinds' ease of use

Hostwinds is very straightforward; it's designed to be helpful. From day one, it advertises "instant setup" and follows through on that, with dedicated onboarding and easy website transfer. Day-to-day, you use a control panel and admin access that is easy to navigate and customize to your specific needs.

By having its server type broken down into five separate categories, Hostwinds keep some of the less frequently needed and overwhelming attributes of more advanced hosting away from newbies, so you're never confused.

Hostwinds' pricing

Hostwinds pricing is fairly middle of the road, offering not only various tiers but various types of hosting. The most commonly used for small businesses will be the shared web hosting option, with the Basic plan starting at $3.29/month as an introductory rate. It allows you to host one domain and gives you unlimited bandwidth and traffic.

Package options for Hostwinds' shared hosting. Image source: Author

Hostwinds' support

The 24/7 support offered by Hostwinds is, in a word, excellent. You can reach representatives by submitting a ticket, calling phone support, or using their responsive live chat.

Even during traditionally busy times, you never have to wait more than a minute or two to be connected to a representative, and that rep is always incredibly well-informed and eager to help.

On the resources side, Hostwinds has an extensive, searchable library ready to answer your questions or expand your knowledge.

Search for help by topic or keyword using the knowledge base resource. Image source: Author

Hostwinds also offers a 60-day, money-back guarantee, which far exceeds other "customer-first" mentalities, giving it a significant competitive advantage when it comes to peace of mind.

Benefits of Hostwinds

Hostwinds pretty much has it all: fantastic uptime, excellent customer support, easy setup, user-friendly interface, and customization. For a hosting service that is secure and intuitive, Hostwinds delivers on all that while also being able to scale along with your business.

With Hostwind, you can add features as your business grows and needs to expand. Image source: Author

Hostwinds is a hosting favorite for a reason

Overall, Hostwinds is an excellent web hosting service that gives you the chance to build, maintain, and grow a substantial web presence with minimal frustrations or stress. You never feel overwhelmed or stifled in using it, making it a top choice.