AwardSpace Reviews

Awardspace specializes in shared hosting and virtual private servers, and as such is going to appeal mostly to owners of personal or small business websites.  With one of the cheapest ‘unlimited’ shared hosting plans around, it may seem like a tempting option.  However, although it has some solid specifications, it does not go far beyond the basics when it comes to useful features and customer support.

Shared Hosting

Now that free shared hosting is offered by so many web hosting companies, plans really need to stand out to be worth your time.  Usually, free hosting is aimed at those looking to set up a personal interest website and who have little or no experience in website design, and so will provide easy-to-use and impressive website design software.  Unfortunately, Awardspace does not offer anything like this in its free hosting plan, and as such fails to stand out from the competition.

The best value-for-money product that Awardspace offers is its paid shared hosting plan.  Whilst it is important to remember that ‘unlimited’ bandwidth and storage is never in fact ‘unlimited’ and will restrict you to ‘normal’ levels of usage for a personal or small business website, this is still going to give your website more room to grow than the majority of shared plans will.  However, there is more here than simply good specifications.  For a plan in this price range, getting a free domain name is fairly rare.  So too is the opportunity to have your entire site backed up daily, which Awardspace includes in its package.  Overall, you could find yourself saving a lot of money.

Virtual Private Servers

Awardspace offers three virtual private server packages.  All have full root access, custom partitioning and an easy-to-use control panel, so you really are in control of your virtual server.  However, two of the main things you will be looking for in a virtual private server are flexibility and scalability, and unfortunately Awardspace scores badly in this department.  With only three plans to choose from, there is not much of an opportunity to grow your virtual server as your needs increase.  And with no dedicated servers offered by the company, you will have to move your hosting if you ever find yourself needing to make the upgrade.  Even with free setup, Awardspace's virtual private servers are do not offer much to get excited about.

Support

As you might expect, the technical support available on the free hosting plan is very limited.  For paid plans it is better, including a telephone contact option with round-the-clock availability and a small selection of online resources.  However, other than this, the support system is fairly weak.  The online area could be greatly expanded, for instance, and the addition of live chat contact would really strengthen the overall package.

Whilst Awardspace offers reasonable specifications on all its hosting plans, as well as a free plan to tempt customers, there is nothing to justify choosing it above many of the other web hosts on the market.  With such strong competition, Awardspace fails to make an impression. 

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