Expert Overview
Large hosting company with nice services
Hawk Hosting Company was established back in 2004 and has quickly grown to become one of the larger hosting providers around. They operate out of five data centers globally, and have plenty of services to give. They seem to be doing a good job at offering a wide range of hosting options including shared, VPS, reseller, semi-dedicated and dedicated hosting services. Many companies that try to offer every type of hosting end up lowering their quality, but this one has managed to avoid that problem
Uptime & Reliability
Good uptime guarantees for all packages
You will get a 99.9% uptime guarantee for their hosting services, which is good. In the event that your site does drop due to server or data center issues, and it falls below this SLA, you will be given a discount for the next months bill. This discount starts at 10% and goes all the way up to 100% in the event that your downtime is greater than 1% for the month.
Most people won’t experience any type of outage, however, as they do provide quite a stable environment. They have six data centers around the world. Four of them are in the United States, one in Singapore, and one in Amsterdam. They all have full power backup and redundant network connections to help avoid any type of outage.
Features
All the features you will need
Hawk Hosting has pretty much every feature you would want for your hosting service. They start off at a fairly low level package, which has some limitations on it, but is plenty good for an entry level blog. You can move up through shared hosting packages until you get to their ‘super’ package that is quite good. It does have a 24000 MB limit on disk space, which is 2.4GB. This should be more than enough for most sites, however.
If you outgrow the shared hosting options, you can eaisly request that the company move you on to a VPS server, or even semi-dedicated or dedicated hosting. Whichever package you decide is right for you, you will get some nice features including LiteSpeed, a premium site builder, fantastico and more.
Support
Good support available 24/7
HawkHost offers phone support 24/7 as well as access to their simple ticketing system, which is monitored around the clock. They also provide a support blog where they can alert you to outages and give you a lot of different self-help documentation.
They also have several social media accounts including Facebook and Google+ that is monitored for simple questions. Any actual technical issues will be directed back to their ticketing system, however.
Pricing
Standard pricing options for all their services
They are right in line with the industry standards for pricing at all their package levels. The entry level hosting is under $4 per month, which is quite nice but still not the lowest you’ll find if all you care about is price. As you move up, you can find some great deals in the mid-range levels. For example, you can get a VPS solution for under $20 and even a semi-dedicated for a lower than expected price.
That being said, the packages have lower hardware specs than you’ll likely find at many other companies, so it really evens out. You’ll need to compare the level of service you need with the price you want to see whether or not it is a good deal for you.
Summary
Very nice hosting for most types of sites
Most people will be able to easily find a package that works for what they need. There are a lot of different options to choose from, which can make it somewhat confusing, but if you take the time to really evaluate all their services against what you need, you’ll find what is best for you.
Pros:
- Plenty of hosting options to choose from
- Good mid-level options including semi-dedicated solutions
- Six data centers located around the world
Cons:
- cPanel costs extra for VPS customers
- No fully dedicated servers
