Host Clear Reviews by Experts and Users

HostClear Review

2015 has seen HostClear really up their game, while they have always offered quality products a recent revamp of their services – including a price drop have seen them move towards a front runner position within shared hosting services.

Host Clear’s user and customer reviews since we have been reviewing them have continued to get better and better.

One thing we have been really impressed with is the add-ons they give to users and the price of cheap hosting (they are giving generally much more out than some of their competitors within this price range. Another thing they have added to their offering which we believe to be very valuable is the quality and volume of their free website templates, often you will get given “free templates” from host that leave a lot to be desired. But the ones on offer form HostClear are really great the site builder also is top notch.

Value for Money

For WebHostingSearch users you get a special rate of $2.99 a month (reduced from 5.98 USD) on a 36 month contract. And while that is quite a long committal they have a good money back guarantee for the 45 days so you can really test them out and judge host clears performance for yourself before finally committing, but if a solid shared host is what you are after, we do not think you will be disappointed.

Let’s get back to the core value of their hosting, firstly – great price but what you get for that is also impressive, we touched on it above but to get unlimited domains, unlimited SQL databases and email accounts, you’ll get a 99.9% uptime guarantee, top quality web site builder (really a stand out product for them) – lots of free templates, Cpanel is also included for free and both that, the interface and FTP are set up to be mobile optimised for the modern user so it’s clearly a great value hosting service. Easy install for the main CMS – one button install for WordPress.

For ecommerce sites there are great shopping cart options already included, SSL  for the base price as well as a “Marketing Suite” with 300USD value for free – this includes $100 free ad spend on both google AdSense and Yahoo /Bing platforms. The templates offer nice options for online stores as well and are very customizable and reliable.

Essentially for only 2.99USD a month we think you are getting about a hosting account worth 10USD/month really.

Performance & Reliability

Firstly as with all top class hosting providers they have a 99.9% uptime guarantee (something we rally suggest anyone looking at hosting makes sure their host provides). At WebHostingSearch we have  a couple of test sites set up on Host Clear and monitor them ourselves via the tool pingdom and we can see very good results so both server balance, uptime response time have been great and match all the other top hosts performance. The database reliability and connection performance have also performed well on our independent tests and monitoring.

Worth noting that the uptime guarantee doesn’t cover “planned maintenance” and while even during the maintenance we didn’t see any drops in performance it was good to be told well in advanced of the planned downtime so we were prepared, there is nothing worse than bad communication form host and gladly this is not the case with HostClear who have been very informative and transparent with all aspects of their plan.

When the site went down the time it was down was fractional and the response time to fix this and get it back up was better than expected and shows the network monitoring they have is very much up to scratch.  

Bandwidth, storage performance and reliability are very good, and all normal sites will not see any problems on their basic “pro” plan, however again they do a great job to communicate in advance (usually 48hours prior to action) if your sites plan needs adjustment to fit into the plans terms.

HostClears’s Email Usage capability is also very good value for a shared hosting platform, allowing customer’s unlimited reliable mailboxes (worth noting that each individual email account has mailbox storage of either 500MB data or 10,000 emails).

Support

Host Clear have 24/7 support teams based in the US (they do not outsource their support like some other companies do to areas such as the Philippines or India).  Overall we cant find fault in their support team, they allow multi-channel contacts – email, phone, live chat – on top a very extensive, well-structured online help section.

The online help section is very well presented and written, and there are hundreds of great tutorials for those new to web, from troubleshooting to full beginner guides to getting your site online as well as guides on SEO basics and web design and conversion best practices. They have gone above and beyond what most of the competitors provide when it comes to online help and support and this area particularly took us as a positive when we compare to other providers.  

The live chat support was both a quick and efficient way to get support, and helps a lot that you can share links and they can guide you visually with issues you have, which can sometimes be a limiting aspect of phone support.

Phone support itself was of quality, good responsive time (some hosts who will be not be mentioned have awfully long queuing times to get through to support agents which is infuriating and time consuming). The support representatives from Host Clear also were friendly and as you can expect/ hope both knowledgeable in the areas we questioned them on and also able to describe fixes in a logical and simple way which is a real plus to those with little experience.  

Ease of use

I think that this maybe Host Clear’s top feature, it so easy and well-made that I’m not sure I have found a hosting plan that is this suitable for those new to hosting a website.

The one click install, the cPanel layout and structure and the mobile optimization leave it years ahead of some hosts who have not really brought this into their thinking or practices.  

The help section / troubleshooting, tutorials and guides are also very user friendly which is important for the new user as its always frustrating if these sections are badly set up or made.  

We like

Tutorial and Help Section: We mentioned it several times for a reason but Host Clear have really built an excellent section in this regards, light years ahead of some of the competitors who seem to think this isn’t important for some reason. It is easy to navigate, is very extensive and presented in a very digestible way.

Cost v Performance Ratio: Simply put what you get for the cost of this hosting plan is great! The unlimited bandwidth, domains and its reliability and general performance levels are what you would expect to pay much more for. The add-ons in the marketing suite, templates and site builder only add to the value of this package form Host Clear.

Site Builder and Templates: Sometimes hosts will a site builder to their hosting packages, but more often than not these are not up to scratch and fall behind the quality provided by independent site builder programs. However Host Clear’s would match pretty much all the independent ones. We loved it, customisable, flexible, easy to use and comprehensive, really good work from them on this. The same goes for the templates, often they are not really great but Host clear are providing modern and great looking templates to choose from.

Important to know

Some things we think important to know before signing up with Host clear are as follows;

• Money back guarantee is valid for 45 days.
• If you cancel there will be an additional domain fee to make up for the domain for life.
• Cancelling any other time after the 45days starter period, the refund will be not cover partial months used.  
• If you abuse or exceed the normal usage policy, you will be given 48 hours to rectify before the account is taken offline.
• As mentioned before, email accounts are unlimited but storage of said email accounts is limited to 10 thousand messages or 500MB
• If your site falls below the 99.9% uptime guarantee you will get one month of hosting credited to your account.
• Discounts are valid only for first time users/ customers of Host Clear.
• Price is dependent on length on sign up contract, and will get more expensive if you were to choose shorter or monthly billings.

Summary

We rate Host Clear very highly here at WebHostingSearch and would recommend their shared hosting plan to all those looking for a regular hosting plan. It’s great for new users with good value, performance and reliability. Support is great and online troubleshooting is top draw. Free marketing suite, site builder and templates are great for e-commerce only add to the host value.The user reviews of Host Clear back up what we think about them and you can read more of those below, feel free to submit your thoughts and customers reviews of your Host clear experience so others can hear about them as well.