HostMetro Review and Test Results

Review

The HostMetro website is easy to navigate, plan features are easy to compare, renewal rates are displayed in the shopping cart, and checkout is fast and easy. We do however, take issue with some of the sales jargon used. The homepage slideshow plainly states that the $2.45 monthly rate is a “Special Offer” for “This Week Only.” That is simply not true. We created the thumbnail screenshot of the HostMetro homepage (below right) on January 11, 2014. It shows the same $2.45 offer that is still available as of July 8, 2014.

Further, the homepage slide fails to mark the $2.45 monthly price with an asterisk indicating that price is only available if you prepay for three years of hosting. While nearly all shared hosts highlight a deeply discounted rate for long-term, pre-paid accounts; such pricing is almost universally marked with an asterisk that refers to fine print indicating the associated plan term. Perhaps the asterisk key at HostMetro is broken.

We also take issue with the second home page slide. While it correctly states that unlike HostMetro, the renewal rates for iPage, Hub, and HostGator are higher than the introductory rates; it also claims that those services do not provide refunds. That is simply untrue. HostGator, Hub, and iPage all provide money-back guarantees. In fact, Hub features a 90-day full money-back guarantee — one of the most generous in the industry.

HOSTING PLANS

HostMetro offers two low-cost shared hosting plans — Mega Max and Business Max. Both include “maximum” disk space and bandwidth; a 99.9% uptime guarantee; a 30-day money-back guarantee; 24/7/365 U.S.-based phone, chat, and e-mail technical support; unlimited FTP accounts; unlimited MySQL databases; free weekly backups; cPanel control panel; Softaculous “1-click” script installer; Trendy Website Builder; RV SiteBuilder; unlimited hosted, parked and sub domains; and unlimited e-mail accounts.

The higher-priced Business Max plan is intended for ecommerce sites and adds an SSL certificate (dedicated) and the SiteLock security seal. However, it is worth noting that the two features are not free after the first year of hosting. This means that you will be paying more for Business Max hosting even though your plan is essentially the same as the Mega Max plan. We fail to see the logic.

PURCHASE PROCESS

As is our practice, we purchased the cheapest available shared hosting plan (Mega Max) for purposes of testing and reviewing. The “Hosting Account Information” e-mail arrived in our inbox eight minutes after the PayPal receipt. It included the control panel login info; server details; temporary hostname; e-mail settings; nameserver information; and more. This allowed us to upload our test site within minutes of completing our purchase.

HostMetro Uptime Test Results Chart. Click to enlarge.

SETUP

In addition to the cPanel control panel, HostMetro provides the newbie-friendly Softaculous applications installer for quick and easy installation of content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and others.

TESTING

After uploading our NCM Test Site to the HostMetro server, we set up Dotcom Monitor speed and reliability testing. All web hosting services reviewed by NCM Online are subjected to 10-day uptime and page-load speed testing. Beginning on 6/22/14 and concluding on 7/1/14, our HostMetro-hosted website was checked for uptime and page-load speed every fifteen minutes. Approximately two thousand individual checks spread across thirteen locations worldwide were performed during the 10-day test period.

Screenshot of HostMetro uptime/downtime test results pie chart. Click to enlarge.

Of the 1,072 server uptime checks performed, 998 were successful, while 74(!) failed (see uptime test results screenshot above right). In all, there were five downtime periods ranging from 15 minutes, 11 seconds to 2 hours, 43 minutes, 48 seconds in duration. All 74 failures were TCP 10060 Errors (connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host failed to respond). Downtime occurred on 6/25/14, 6/26/14, 6/27/14, 6/28/14, and 6/29/14. Unfortunately, these problems lowered HostMetro’s reliability score to lowest we have recorded to date — 98.4396% (see pie chart screenshot above right), and adversely affected their page-load speed test results.

HostMetro Speed Test Results Chart. Click to enlarge.

While HostMetro’s page-load speeds were average or slightly better during uptime periods, they increased markedly when averaged over the entire 10-day test period. Page load speed for our simple 1-page test site averaged a painfully slow 4.7404 seconds across 13 test locations worldwide (see screenshot right). The 7 U.S. test locations recorded an average of 4.0749 seconds for a browser to load our page. HostMetro had produced the slowest average page-load speed as well as the worst reliability percentage we have recorded to date.

Pros

• Affordably-priced hosting plans
• Prominent disclosure of renewal rates
• Quick and easy checkout
• PayPal payment option
• “Hosting Account Information” e-mail contains all the information required to set up your website quickly
• Free website transfer
• Free weekly website backups
• Unlimited e-mail accounts
• Unlimited domains hosted
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• Unlimited subdomains
• Free domain name with FREEDOMAIN coupon code (first year only)
• 20% off coupon code: SAVE20
• Choice of free site builders
• U.S.-based, 24/7/365 phone, chat and e-mail support
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• Major server reliability issues
• Slow average page-load speeds
• Coupon code for free domain name cannot be used in conjunction with the 20% off coupon code — you must choose between the two.

Conclusion

Despite the low price and a number of excellent hosting features, reliability and average page-load speed issues prevent us from endorsing HostMetro at this time.

HostMetro has earned only 3 stars and is not recommended by NCM Online.

 Low-cost HostMetro Web Hosting Plans

Cheap website hosting company price comparisons based on 1-year term list price before coupon/promo codes or limited time/introductory offer discounts. These are the renewal rates for the second year of hosting. To ensure that you receive the most affordable HostMetro pricing possible, please visit our Web Hosting Coupon Codes page for current discounts and special offers before making any purchases.

Plan	Mega Max	Business Max
Hosting Space	Maximum	Maximum
Bandwidth	Maximum	Maximum
Cloud Technology
Full Money Back Guarantee
24/7/365 U.S. Based Support
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
Unlimited FTP Accounts
Unlimited MySQL Databases
Weekly Backups
cPanel Control Panel
Softaculous 1-Click Script Installer
Trendy Website Builder
RVSiteBuilder
Domain Names
Hosted Domains	Maximum	Maximum
Free Domain Name
Domain Privacy	$0.50/month	Free
Parked Domains	Unlimited	Unlimited
Sub Domains	Unlimited	Unlimited
Email Features
Email Accounts	Unlimited	Unlimited
Web Based Email
POP3 & IMAP Supported
Auto Responders
E-Mail Forwarding
Mailing Lists
Customizable E-Mail Filters
Advanced Spam Protection
Mobile Devices Supported
E-Commerce Features
SSL Certificate	$2.50/month	Free
SiteLock Security Seal	$2.50/month	Free
FREE Shared SSL
$100 Google AdWords Credit
FREE SEO Submission	X
FREE SEO Consultation	X
FREE SEO E-book	X
FREE Business Directory Listing	X
Google Checkout Supported
PayPal Supported
ZenCart
osCommerce
Advanced Firewall
Password Protected Directories
Additional Features
CGI-BIN
PHP Support
SSI (Server Side Includes)
Cron Jobs
Log Files and Site Analytics Software
WordPress
b2evolution
Forums
Streaming Audio
Streaming Video
Flash Supported
Metro Max Guarantee
24/7 In House U.S. Support
Renewal Rate Lock
99.9% uptime guarantee
No Hidden Fees
Advance Technologies
cPanel Hosting Control Panel
1-Click Script Installer
Cloud Technology
Easy to use Sitebuilder
Advanced Security
Daily Malware Scan
Advanced Spam Blocker
Highly Secure Data Center
Advanced Firewall
Price per Month*	$4.45	$6.95

*Prices based on 1-year term before the application of coupon/promo codes and introductory/limited-time offer discounts. While you may pay less for the first year of hosting, the prices displayed on this page are the 1-year term renewal rates.

Company Information

HostMetro is a customer-oriented business. They strive to offer their clients the most dependable and painless webhosting experience while being simultaneously the friendliest. Individualized attention focused on every customer is their main goal. Keeping websites available around the clock is priority knowing they owe all their successes to their customers and their sites. Customers rate HostMetro as a reliable webhost with their superior service, staff, and support.

The staff behind HostMetro is extremely experienced with more than 50 years in the webhosting industry between them. A few industry veterans are among the ownership and management team. Few others know how to better create a more dependable webhosting experience at great prices. Their support team, having more than five years of experience in most members, knows all aspects of the problems customers can experience and how to best deal with them. This assistance is available around the clock to help with any hosting needs.

HostMetro makes sure that their servers are hosted on the most superior equipment available with no spending limit. The servers they use are brand new, from Supermicro and have Intel Xeon CPUs that have RAID protection and Solid State Drives. The datacenter’s fast connections enable the firm to guarantee 99.9% uptime. A simple Hosting Control Panel called cPanel organizes tools for clients to make their hosting experience even simpler. They also utilize more industry leading technologies such as Cloud Linux. Going a step further, HostMetro automatically backs up all hosting accounts every week to ensure safety of their clients’ sites. The cPanel also has a tool for the customer if they need to back up more than once per week.

The firm wants to make every customer’s experience with webhosting easy and worry-free. Creating and maintaining a website is easy with the quality tools they offer, not to mention the premium support team behind it all. They ensure that the renewal rates will never be raised while a customer hosts with the company. HostMetro offers an exclusive policy called Metro Max Guarantee which avoids the mess of terms of service maintaining customer satisfaction as the top priority. HostMetro promises that any trouble a customer has that is brought to their attention will be addressed with everything that is in their power to correct it. This is all promised with a no-questions-asked money back guarantee valid for 45 days.

HostMetro, Inc. 415 W Golf Rd Suite 5 Arlington Heights, IL 60005 800-485-9730 310-693-6200 Fax 847-307-8443

How to Install WordPress

This video tutorial demonstrates the installation of WordPress on an HostMetro shared hosting account using the cPanel control panel and the Softaculous applications installer.