Streamline Reviews

Costs:

• Starter: £1.48 per month.
• Personal: £2.38 per month.
• Plus: £4.18 per month.
• Multisite: £7.78 per month.

• Hosting specifications include:
  • Starter:
    • Unlimited bandwidth.
    • 500 MB web space.
    • Windows or Linux operating system.
  • Personal:
    • Unlimited bandwidth.
    • 3 GB web space.
    • Windows or Linux operating system.
    • Windows or Linux scripting.
  • Plus:
    • Unlimited bandwidth.
    • 10 GB web space.
    • Windows or Linux operating system.
    • Advanced scripting features.
  • Multisite:
    • Unlimited bandwidth.
    • 20 GB web space.
    • Windows and Linux scripting.
    • SSH access.

• Website and domain features include:
  • Starter:
    • 1 website.
    • 5 subdomains.
    • Great range of domain extensions.
  • Personal:
    • 1 website.
    • 20 subdomains.
    • Great range of domain extensions.
  • Plus:
    • 1 website.
    • 300 subdomains.
    • Great range of domain extensions.
    • Free .uk domain.
  • Multisite:
    • 10 websites.
    • Unlimited subdomains.
    • Great range of domain extensions.

• Email features include:
  • Starter:
    • Webmail email.
    • 20 email forwarders.
    • 20 email accounts.
    • Antivirus/spam mailboxes are £15.00 per annum.
  • Personal:
    • Webmail email.
    • 500 email forwarders.
    • 500 email accounts.
    • 1 antivirus/spam mailbox.
  • Plus:
    • Webmail email.
    • 1000 email forwarders.
    • 1000 email accounts.
    • 5 antivirus/spam mailboxes.
  • Multisite:
    • Webmail email.
    • Unlimited email forwarders.
    • Unlimited email accounts.
    • Antivirus/spam mail boxes are £15.00 per annum.

• Website features include:
  • Online file manager.
  • Custom error pages.
  • Raw log files.
  • FTP accounts:
    • Starter, Personal and Plus: 1.
    • Multisite: 10.
  • Supports ASP, PHP, Perl and Python (not Starter).
  • MySQL databases (Linux): 1 for Plus; £25.00 per annum for Multisite.
  • MSSQL databases (Windows): 1 for Plus; £199.00 per annum for Multisite.
  • SSH (Linux Plus and Multisite only).

• Support features include:
  • Telephone support. (9am-7pm, Monday-Friday).
  • Ticket system.
  • Online support center.

Editor's Verdict:

Streamline.net earns its name, with an attractively and simply designed website, which clearly displays the differences between its four shared hosting plans. However, beyond this, there is not much here to warrant interest, with Streamline's plans failing to live up to the standard of its website. Although no aspect of the company's hosting is truly disastrous, neither does it excel in any one area. Whatever you are looking for from your shared hosting plan, you will be able to find better elsewhere.

Shared Hosting

Despite a small amount of flexibility and a choice between Linux and Windows operating system, the best word to describe most of Streamline's plans might be 'limited'. At a time when many of the site's competitors are offering 'unlimited' specifications, databases, email accounts and domains hosted, Streamline caps nearly everything, and at quite severe levels. The exception to this rule is of course bandwidth, with the unlimited transfer allowance allowing you to attract high visitor traffic to your website. However, with such limited disk space, those wanting to create large or media-rich sites will be quite restricted, and with all but the Multisite plan allowing customers to host only 1 domain per account, even the small prices constitute quite poor value for money.

When it comes to website design, Streamline's offering is also quite meager. The Starter plan, in particular, offers very poor functionality, with minimal script support. And with only 1 FTP account on the lower three plans, and no database provision on any but the company's Plus package, users with more ambitious website design aims will be disappointed. When it comes to email, most users will be able to run their sites within the limits that Streamline imposes on mail boxes and forwarders. However, charging users for antispam functions seems a desperate measure, and certainly one not taken by many other web hosts.

Support

Streamline's technical support is sufficient for the majority of users' needs, with both telephone and ticket contact and an adequate online resource area. However, we would like to have seen a live chat support option, and the limited hours on the telephone support may prove restrictive if you are trying to fit in a call around working hours or if you have an urgent issue that needs solving during the night. A slightly extended online support center would also have been useful, with greater emphasis on step-by-step guides or video tutorials.

Although Streamline has one or two nice features, it really fails to compete with the multitude of other shared hosting specialists on the web. With so many options for your shared hosting provider, there is no reason to compromise on features, specifications and support, so we suggest you check out our Top 10 for some of the best web hosts around.

Please note that Streamline has now been discontinued.