Item: IdeaHost
Rating: 8
Author: Jonathan Kerns

Affordable Pricing

As a special introductory offer, IdeaHost offers their hosting plan at discounted rates so you can concentrate more on creating interesting blog content to capture your reader’s attention. Their plan prices are:

$6.99 for monthly subscription
$4.99 a month for annual subscription
$2.99 a month for a full 2-year subscription

Once your contract is up, the prices will revert to their regular rates, which are:

$13.98 for a monthly term
$9.98 a month for an annual term
$7.98 a month for a 2-year term
$5.98 for a 3-year subscription

Features

Signing up for IdeaHost includes an unmetered storage space and bandwidth. It must be noted, however, that while you have no limit with these values, there is an acceptable “normal operation” usage that you have to comply to. Should you exceed this, you will be given 48 hours to make the proper adjustment, otherwise, they will take your account offline. You don’t have to worry though, as 95% of all their customers are able to operate their websites within the fair usage terms.

You can also enjoy unlimited domains and MySQL databases, a drag and drop and template-based website builder complete with a blog setup wizard, thousands of templates, a photo gallery setup wizard, a personal email address through cPanel, email forwarding, autoresponders, spam filters, virus checking, POP3/ IMAP email, $100 worth of Yahoo/ Bing credits, and online marketing guides, to help your blog reach a larger audience.

Reliability

Complying to industry standards, IdeaHost has an uptime guarantee of 99.99%, and based on customer feedback, it seems that they are consistent in providing a reliable performance in this aspect. They are even offering a month’s worth of credit in the unlikely case that their downtime goes above 0.01% — this is how confident they are with their service.

IdeaHost is a competent hosting service if you are just starting out on your blog, or if you have a small number of followers have yet to acquire a bigger portion of readers and visitors. Given their user-friendly tools and bundled marketing credits, you will have no difficulty setting up shop, and you can expect your blog to take off and get a fair number of visitors and followers in no time.

Customer Support

While IdeaHost has a useful support center with a knowledgebase and a search toolbar to help you find related articles to your keywords in an instant, they also make it easy for you to get in touch with their support team. In the main support page itself, you can readily initiate a live chat session, check on their phone line, or send them an email. Their department is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to answer all your questions and assist you in any way possible.

Your Plan. Your Satisfaction.

In the event that you have tried IdeaHost’s service and felt that the plan isn’t for you, you still have the option to request for a refund. They have a 45-day money-back guarantee in these cases, and all you have to do is get in touch with their support team and let them know about your request.

Of course, if you have any comments or feedback regarding the service, it would be best to let their representative know about these concerns for they may be able to find solutions to address them. Satisfaction is an important aspect of the total customer service experience, and IdeaHost takes steps to make sure that you aren’t just settling for their service.

What's the Verdict on IdeaHost?

There Are Better Options