Launched in 1997, SoftCom is a Canadian firm that specializes in providing web technologies to small businesses and individual clients. MyHosting is the webhosting aspect of their business, through which they provide Windows and Linux hosting services, dedicated hosting plans, shared hosting, virtual private servers and a full range of ancillary services. They also sell small business services, including web design, technology consultation, online marketing, search engine optimization and so forth.

Recently, MyHosting has garnered a lot of attention due to a powerful, feature-rich hosting package starting at $4.84 per month. This is a plan anyone can afford, and in light of SoftCom and MyHosting’s reputation for integrity, reliability and impeccable customer service, I knew I had found my target: MyHosting would be the next webhosting provider that I put through the paces. And in the following sections, I’ll describe in detail my experiences and resulting opinion.

Value for Money

MyHosting has a diverse offering, but they lay out it simply broken into three customizable tiers: Basic, Premium and Professional. The basic hosting plan, which starts at $4.84 per month and runs on Linux, includes a free domain name, free Outlook email, unlimited storage space, unlimited file transfer, unlimited domain hosting and a $25 Google Adwords voucher. It also has all the expected perks, such as auto-installed WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Gallery2 and so on.

MyHosting only sells their packages by the year, so that $4.84 rate comes with a 12-month commitment. However, MyHosting also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee, which you can use to opt out if you decide that the package just isn’t for you. That won’t be a problem for most. MyHosting is a lot of value for the money that includes the benefits mentioned above as well as MySQL databases, PostgreSQL databases, a web-based Site Builder, an ecommerce solution and much more.

Performance & Reliability

Of course, performance and reliability are the brass tacks. If they underperform in these aspects, then that “value” we spoke of earlier isn’t worth much. The good news is that MyHosting has high performance and reliability standards, and they put their money where their mouth is. They provide the no-hassle 30-day money-back guarantee, and they have a 100% guarantee for server uptime and network uptime.

For every hour (or less) that they fail to live up to that guarantee, they provide each client with a FULL-DAY CREDIT. That’s impressive and unusual at this rate, and it demonstrates their confidence. Since 2005, MyHosting has experienced very little downtime. In addition, there was no downtime at all during the recent period in which I used the service for the purposes of this review. The entire service was rock solid, and it worked exactly as expected.

Support

MyHosting offers customer support by phone, live chat and email 24/7 including holidays, and clients can use whichever support type suits them best. I put their support to the test early on during the sign-up process. I started with a simple question, the answer to which is that their servers are located in Toronto. Next, I asked them to explain the difference between unlimited file transfer and unlimited bandwidth, and they answered thoroughly and honestly.

For the last question, I asked about Joomla customizations, particularly concerning issues I’ve encountered before and how I could overcome them. When it comes to sales reps, this question separates the wheat from the chaff, and I was pleasantly surprised that Michael had understood my questions, had obviously dealt with these issues before and offered actual insight, not just answers by rote. MyHosting has some of the best customer service I’ve encountered.

• Support-oriented blog

• Community forums

• 24/7 Live Chat 

• 24/7 Email via web form

• 24/7 Phone: 1-866-595-5091 (US)

• Support is English only, but they also have toll-free numbers for Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey and the UK.

As you can see above - nothing to complain about here. Getting in contact with support is easy.

Ease of Use

With the basic hosting plan you get something called an oncloud control panel. I’m more used to cPanel and Helm but I thought this was a very good control panel. It had all the features one could expect and it was easy to understand how to use it. If you get their VPS hosting plan you get access to the better-known panels.

We Like

• The thoroughness and availability of their customer support system

• That they include advanced features in their economy-hosting package

• The system MyHosting uses to guarantee server and network uptime

Important to Know

• All MyHosting plans are available on a 12-month or multiple-year basis only.

• Upgrades, however, are available in a prorated fashion for current accounts.

When I look for a webhost, the two most important factors are customer support and expandability. I want a company that treats me like I’m important. I also want a service that will grow with my website as it becomes more successful. In these two areas, MyHosting brings it in spades. They understand what clients want, and they know how to deliver it. They also pack in the features, and were actually adding and upgrading features during my test run.

If I have one complaint about MyHosting is that they don’t offer hosting by the month. Sure, they offset that with their guarantee, but that scares a lot of people because of the common horror stories.