Uptime & Reliability

Very Stable Hosting

One of the biggest benefits of using cloud technologies is that they are very stable.  Just about everything is spread out over multiple physical pieces of hardware so that if one goes down it is not likely to impact the site as a whole.  They offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is fairly standard in the industry. You’ll also have options for solid state drives once you get into the higher end hosting.  SSD’s are very stable and will help provide you with a great hosting environment.

Features

Generous Hosting Features

When you look through all the options available you will see that Acens divides everything up just like a normal hosting provider.  They have shared hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting. This appears to be done just to make it easier to understand what you’re getting, even though they integrate cloud technologies into each level.

The ‘Shared’ hosting services can come in either Linux or Windows for the operating system.  The entry level option has 50 gigs of disk space, but after that it is unlimited at every level.  All but the lowest level also come with at least one free domain name.  One interesting thing this company does is provide you with information about the servers your site will be hosted on.  For example, one of the higher level shared packages says it has up to 2 gigs of RAM.  While this is nice, it is shared between all the customers so it is not very useful information in terms of determining how your server will perform.

When you move up to their VPS solutions you will have four main choices, three of them being Linux and one Windows.  They offer generous amounts of disk space (25-100 gigs) and a reasonable amount of RAM (1-3 gigs).  Beyond that, however, they don’t really provide you many details regarding the features of each package unless you really click around or contact their sales team.

The dedicated servers are run on Dell PowerEdge systems, which are one of the most popular and proven options in the hosting industry today.  They all use Intel Xeon CPUs and can include 16-256 gigs of RAM.  You can opt for solid state drives on all but the lowest level dedicated server, which is a great option for those who need the fastest and most stable experiences.

Support

Helpful Tech Support

If you run into any trouble with your hosting, the Acens tech support team will be more than happy to assist you with anything you need.  You can contact them via phone, an online form or email and they seem to respond quite quickly, especially if it is impacting your site.  You’ll also find that they have some nice information available on their site to help you learn more about their services, but you’ll have to click around to find what you need.

Pricing

Unusual Pricing Structure

The pricing with this company is a little hard to get used to.  They start out with a base price but then charge more each month on top of it based on which package you choose for the shared hosting level.  The prices aren’t excessive in most cases, but the way they have things listed are certainly more confusing than they need to be.  Many of their extra services like SEO and marketing options also aren’t free so it is important to keep that in mind when weighing your options.  To sum up their pricing I’d say that while it is reasonable, it would be much better if they would just list a set price per month like other hosting companies do.

User Friendly

Friendly Company – Confusing Options

Acens is clearly interested in helping their customers get what they need.  When it comes to choosing your services, however, they haven’t done a good job at making this easy.  As mentioned above, they have confusing pricing structures, which makes it hard to understand what you will actually be paying.  They only list a limited amount of information on the hosting feature pages so you need to dig around to learn what you’re getting.  They also have a variety of options listed in multiple places so it is too difficult to really understand where to look for what you need.  While the hosting itself is user friendly, the buying process certainly isn’t.

Summary

Great Cloud Hosting with Some Concerns

The quality of the hosting with this company is clearly goign to be quite good.  The problem, however, is getting from the point you first get to their page to the point where you are ready to sign up.  If Acens would re-do their site to make it less confusing, especially for people who are newer to web hosting, it would provide for a much better overall experience.

Pros:

• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• Cloud Technologies
• Extra Features Available for Marketing & SEO

Cons:

• Confusing Pricing Structure
• Difficult to Find Information You Need