HostPapa Review
HostPapa started business in year 2006 and it is one of the earliest green hosting companies. For only $3.95 customers can enjoy unlimited disk space, domain hosting, and bandwidth. At this time of writing, Hostpapa operates business from both United States, Canada, UK and France.
Hostpapa Overall rating
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HostPapa Inc.
Website: http://www.hostpapa.com
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What’s good about HostPapa Hosting?
Ultra Low Cost Hosting
Hostpapa is now, officially, one of the cheapest host. The company’s recent promotion, slashing the price from $7.95/mo to $3.95/mo for 36 months hosting plan, is HUGE. iPage, JustHost, BlueHost, FatCow… these names used to be linked with the name ‘Cheapest Host’ but not now anymore (most of them have raised their price due to inflation).
Right now, at $3.95/mo (I repeat, $3.95/mo), Hostpapa is the king of budget host.
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
Hostpapa offers pretty standard features – unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited addon domains, free domain…etc etc. These are more or less the same hosting features you’ll get from most other web hosting services.
What draws my attention to Hostpapa is their outstanding server uptime guarantees. In fact, server reliability is where Hostpapa outranked most other web hosts. Hostpapa is offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee to all of their shared hosting users and this is some real sign of confidence! I don’t run any website at Hostpapa right now but I find such strong guarantee is very convincing and if I would have to buy a new web host today – Hostpapa will be my first choice.
Green Hosting from Hostpapa
Hostpapa is one of the earliest that went green. The web host has taken the initiative of going green since year 2006 by buying renewable energy to power their servers and office.
How green hosting works at Hostpapa?
Of course Hostpapa does not have a wind turbine or a solar panel farm on top of the data center.
After an energy audit by a third-party provider (Green-e.org, for example) to calculate Hostpapa electrical energy consumption from traditional sources, HostPapa purchased "green energy tags" from a certified clean energy supplier. That supplier calculates the total energy consumption of Hostpapa operation (from hosting websites to office admin works) and uses their suppliers of green energy to pump in 100% equivalent energy back into the power grid.
This effectively cuts down on the carbon dioxide-producing (CO2) energy that we normally would have required from non-green energy sources.
What might goes wrong with HostPapa?
*Important: Expensive cancellation fees during refund period
I found this when I was reading Hostpapa’s terms of service: Should you become dissatisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your account activation, HostPapa will refund your hosting fees, subject to the money back guarantee terms listed in this agreement.
Further investigations shows that Hostpapa is charging quite a lot on customers who are trying to cancel their account. First, there’s a $19.95 one-time setup fees, next the free domain that you go upon signup will cost you another $24.95. In other words, you’ll lose about $40+ when you ask for your refund within the 30 days.
Telephone and live chat goes off during non-office hours in weekends
It’s kind of strange to see Hostpapa is not offering 24/7 live chat support during weekends.For weekdays, Hostpapa live chat support is 24/7; however when it comes to weekends, the live chat will only be available from 6:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. (EST).
Inconsistent Management Styles
Not long ago, Hostpapa employed monthly update coupon code system where informed shoppers will get some good discount; then it switched to permenant promotion link system where shoppers following certain links will get the price cut; and nowadays the company simply abandon the entire coupon/promo code thingy (but yet, they still include a coupon-code column in the order form). I have deal with three different affiliate managers from Hostpapa within the past three years and all three come with a different story how things work in Hostpapa.
The company gives me the impression that they are not very organized and this is why I rate only 3 stars on their reliability even though their server is pretty stable.
Hostpapa Hosting Promotion
Here are some other addon offers that come a long with Hostpapa hosting plans.
Free $50 Ask Sponsor Listings
 | Free $25 Miva Ads credits  |
| Free $25 Yahoo! Marketing credits | Free $25 Google Adwords credits |
Conclusion: Is HostPapa recommended?
I used to run a charity website (sort of, it’s for my secondary school, in year 2007) on Hostpapa and I am very happy with their server reliability. I mean, I didn’t track the server uptime 24/7 as I do nowadays but I hardly remember any significant downtime with Hostpapa. This leaves me very good impression on them and this is why I am recommending them.
If you are looking for a budget host, then Hostpapa is the kind of service you can’t afford to miss out.