Justhost Review

Pros and Cons After 40+ Months of Tracking

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

JustHost hosting review

Chris Phillips started JustHost.com back in 2002 in Glendale, California. Fast forward to 2012, and it was acquired by EIG.

That gives us an inkling of what results to expect based on reviewing many other EIG brands so far (iPage and HostGator).

To give them a fair chance, we set-up a WordPress website on the JustHost ‘Shared’ plan in June of 2015. Since then, we’ve been monitoring their uptime and speed closely in anticipation of providing you with this fair, unbiased review.

Here are the results so far:

Pros of Using Justhost Hosting

If you’ve read any of our other hosting reviews, you might notice that something is missing here (like the ‘Big 3’ including uptime, speed, and service).

There’s a reason for that…

However, before we get to that, let’s focus on the positives.

1. Instant Server Provisioning

Some hosts require a lengthy sign-up process for most new accounts, which means you (yes, even the international ones) might have to jump on the phone to verify who you are.

That means you can expect a SLOW process (not to mention frustrating and slightly irritating too). Or the occasional odd-hour phone call requirement.

The good news is that JustHost offers instant server provisioning if you want to go with their premium, VPS, or dedicated services.

2. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee and Add-Ons

JustHost offers a standard 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not happy with your initial experience. That’s just about (see what we did there?) industry average for those of you keeping track at home.

It’s important to note that the refund only applies to the hosting service.

It doesn’t apply to other products, like domains. Since free domains are included, JustHost deducts a non-refundable domain fee of $15.99 from your refund to cover their costs.

You can then transfer the domain name you have chosen to another web host. Be aware that you can’t transfer newly registered domains to another host within 60 days of activation.
justhost features
JustHost easily integrates with popular platforms like Google Apps, in addition to over 100 other open source applications.

They will also throw in free Google and Bing advertising credits, which is a handy little bonus if you’re ready to start generating online sales.

3. Free Domain Name

New account sign-ups will also get a free domain name (regardless of the hosting plan you choose).

Hooray!

4. Free Script Library

With every JustHost account, you’ll get a full script library for free.

SimpleScripts can automatically install any of the scripts you choose right to your site. Available scripts include WordPress, osCommerce, phpBB, and Joomla.

That way, you can install the scripts you need without having to be a coding genius.

5. Good Security

When choosing a web host, security should be one of your top priorities.

Thankfully, JustHost offers tons of different forms of site security. They use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), secure shell (SSH), solid-state drive (SSD), and more.

They also provide SiteLock, which includes:

  • Daily 360-degree vulnerability scanning
  • Dashboard Reports
  • Alerts & Email Notifications
  • A dynamic verifiable security badge
  • Security Maintenance
  • 360-degree scanning (defacement, drive-by downloads, database vulnerabilities, and application vulnerabilities)

You’ll also receive instant alerts and reports to your email address and dashboard if a threat is detected. That way, you can take action against harmful content before your site is blacklisted.

JustHost claims that you can contact their team to clean up malicious files if you don’t know how to remove them yourself.

6. Improved Page Loading Times

A previous 24-month review of their page loading times has finally shown above-average performance.

JustHost has come in around 731ms, which is pretty good considering industry standards.

If they keep up the good performance, then that’s good news because speed (or lack thereof) is one of the primary reasons people leave your site (without becoming a client or customer). Visitors bounce, page views fall, conversions take a hit, and customer satisfaction across the board declines.

Last 12-month average load time:

JustHost last 12-month detailed statistics
JustHost average speed 2019-2020 | See stats

Cons of Using Justhost Hosting

The most important features that a hosting provider delivers are:

  1. Uptime: The average amount of time your website is online and available (not ‘down’, where visitors can’t access it because of server errors or issues)
  2. Speed: How quickly (or slowly) your pages load all content, images, and more. As a general rule, the slower the website, the lower the conversions.
  3. Customer Support: Good service should go above and beyond to help you figure out how to make your site experience the best while troubleshooting common issues when they pop up. That’s especially true if you’re not the most technical person in the world.

And if you read the PROS section (gotcha — skimmers!), you’ll notice that two out of three features haven’t appeared yet.

That’s… not a good sign. Take a look:

1. Poor Customer Support

In overall our experience with their customer support was rather okay. JustHost support connected within 3 minutes and reply to our question was provided relatively quickly.

However, a background check revealed mixed reviews from other customers..

JustHost Support

It seems like JustHost’s quality of customer service may have taken a turn for the worse back in 2015.

Just look at the exchange that Twitter user @_MichaelTanner had with JustHost in March of 2015:

JustHost twitter 1

It seems that JustHost has used the same approach on Twitter as they do in their live chat service. The company sent Michael a link in their response that didn’t seem to be helpful.

And he’s not the only customer to take to Twitter to complain.

In January of 2016, Twitter user @natecyph said that though he’s been with JustHost for a long time, their customer service is unacceptable.

JustHost Twitter2

The company replied to him, but it looks like they might have been too late.

Another web hosting company named “Cut All The Shit” also replied and encouraged him to migrate his site to their servers.

JustHost Twitter 3

The exchange goes to show how much web host users value quality customer service.

If access to effective, 24/7 customer support is important to you, you may want to think twice about committing to JustHost.

2. Below-Average Uptime of 99.88%

Over the past 24 months, JustHost’s uptime came in at an average of 99.88% which is below the industry standard of 99.93%.

It’s a pity because, in the past 12 months, JustHost has shown decent results and even kept their uptime 100% in consecutive 4 months (December 2018-March 2019).  However, it wasn’t enough to boost up their average uptime during our testing period.

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • January 2020 average uptime: 99.46%
  • December 2019 average uptime: 99.87%
  • November 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • October 2019 average uptime: 98.20%
  • September 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • August 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
  • July 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
  • June 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • May 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • April 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
  • March 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • February 2019 average uptime: 100%
JustHost last 24-month statistics
JustHost average uptime | See stats

3. Cheapest Price ONLY With 3 Year, Upfront Payment

JustHost appears inexpensive on the face of it, with a stated $3.95 monthly rate.

Note that you need to pay for three years, all at once upfront if you want to lock in that great rate. Otherwise, a shorter-term (like 12 months) will set you back with $5.95 a month instead (again – paid upfront).

To make matters worse, once this ‘promotional’ rate expires when your plan ends, your pricing options will rise again.

When adjusted for the effective price, it puts JustHost in direction competition with some of the best hosts we’ve reviewed. (You know, the ones with far better speed and support too.)

4. Weekly Backups Aren’t Guaranteed

JustHost offers weekly backups.

While that offer is not great (some other hosts offer daily or nightly ones in comparison), it’s good (on the face of it). Having at least a weekly copy laying around in case of emergencies is helpful and nice to know.

But…

JustHost doesn’t guarantee the weekly backups they offer. They technically offer one but don’t support or stand behind it.

Um… what?

Obviously, you can’t really bank the security and future of your website on that less-than-inspiring claim.

You might want to find a plan B just in case.

5. The Quantity of Upsell(s) Was Too High

Any company should be free to try and drive revenue however they see fit.

Unfortunately, the amount of upsells you’re bombarded with when signing up for JustHost is rather frustrating.

Many others have already complained about this practice, but unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped the constant rush of upsells.

JustHost Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of the hosting plans they offer:

Basic Plan Plus Plan Choice Plus Plan
Pricing $3.95/month
Renews at $9.49/mo		 $6.95/month
Renews at $12.49/mo		 $6.95/month
Renews at $14.99/mo
Websites 1 Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Storage 50GB Unmetered Unmetered
Email Accounts 5 Unlimited Unlimited
Other Features – • 1 SpamExperts • 1 SpamExperts
• 1 Domain Privacy+Protection
• CodeGuard Basic

Quick Facts

  • Free domain? Yes.
  • Ease of Signup: Quick, two-step signup process.
  • Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal.
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: Shared hosting accounts have a limit of 200,000 inodes, 1,000 database tables, and 3GB total MySQL/PostgreSQL databases. Exceeding this limit may lead to termination of your account with or without notice.
  • Upsells: Lots of upsells.
  • Account Activation: Quick activation.
  • Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Their own heavily customized cPanel.
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): “One-click installs” option for installing popular apps and CMSs.

Do We Recommend JustHost?

Difficult to say.

Even though their speed is decent, JustHost fails in two out of the three major services as a web host.

The quality of their customer support was marginal at best and JustHost’s uptime is also below average that we would like to see.

In addition, their true pricing put them in direct competition with some much better hosts at a similar price range.

It might be worth checking those out first to save yourself some time, money, nerves, and hassle in the long run.

Visit www.JustHost.com

Have you used JustHost? Please leave an honest and transparent review below – good or bad, we appreciate both.

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17 user reviews for Justhost

Ben

1 — 

Did not provide DNS service

I paid for DNS hosting. JustHost would not allow me to point the "A" record to my site. After weeks of negotiating they finally managed to do it. A few months later it was reverted and the site was pointed back to some ad server in Utah instead of my website. This happened periodically, and took weeks to fix each time. Very bad for my clients. 1/5 stars.

Charmayne D

1 — 

Zero rating

This company has been a nightmare. If you want to be on the world's slowest chat and not get the help you need, then Just Host is your place. They are also more expensive (by a lot) than the new host I found. I moved my website and domain. My new cost was $35 versus Just Host being $170! And guess what? The new place communicates wonderfully and quickly. My advice- Run away from Just Host and shop around !

A V

1 — 

Just Host? Just throw your money away

I hired JustHost for SEO back in February. They would call once a month for fifteen minutes to "discuss" the performance of my website. Not one time were the calls beneficial...mostly just blathering on and on and on. They never even got my name right. So, for three months I had no noticeable movement because they had failed to inform me of errors on my site. They promised a credit but never gave it to me. One time I mentioned that we had issues with the site and the woman on the other end of the phone started dressing me down that I she informed me of the changes we were supposed to make. I was never informed of these changes...She blamed me for the poor performance of my site. I've never been treated so poorly....ever. And I've never wasted so much money. Ridiculous company...don't use them. Do not use Just Host for any SEO, you are throwing your money away.

Timothy A

3 — 

Good, until you need support

I have been just a host customer for years. For the most part, I have no issues. On a shared server, I typically get fast speeds... and that is with me making multiple posts daily and getting thousands of visitors daily. But, when a problem crops up, they will have you pulling your hair out. You start with their tier-1, who will suggest you do all the things you likely did before calling. If none of that fixes the problem, you are then bumped to tier-2, which you cannot talk to and will have to wait for an email. After several days, the typical response is the site is currently running fine but if you are still having problems to email them back. Of course, everything is not fine and you email them back. A day or two later, with no response, you call again. The tier-1 support will then tell you there is nothing they can do because the issue is with tier-2, which will only communicate via email. So, you ask to speak to a supervisor because tier-2 is not communicating... but a supervisor is never "available". Eventually things get fixed, but not without days and days of aggregation.

Brian

1 — 

Terrible Company

I was arbitrarily transferred from Ehost (good company) to justhost shortly after signing up. I immediately ran into problems. Their Cpanel was completely non-functional. Links went to 404 (and still do). They kept telling me they were still updating the Cpanel. This went on for over two years! Their help section was and is completely useless because it has never been updated. Want to back up your site? Forget it... You can't do it yourself (but an inaccurate how to is still in the help section). That now costs more money unless they do it for you. Customer service? None. When I called wondering where the free backup link had gone I was told it was a pay edition now. When she claimed she could do it for me it was obvious she had no idea what she was doing or what she was backing up. The only way to get things done is to talk to an actual tech. If you use Drupal don't go with justhost. Key updates that should have been done haven't. There is so much more... I don't like badmouthing a company but this one truly deserves it.

Steve

1 — 

Worst company, customer service, scammers.

I used this domain on a company called ehost as a test over a year ago. Justhost bought them out, I guess reactivated only the billing and said I signed up for auto renewal. The site had been down and account closed for a year. The tried billing me hundreds several times a day, also sent me atleast 8 emails a day, everyday. No answers to emails they just bounce. Live chat said she would stop it, she didnt. Called boy on the phone said if I didnt verify with the password (no other options) then he would not stop it. I never signed up in the first place with justhost, the test domain and host package they are trying to get hundreds of dollars a day for was off and canceled for a year. I had to turn off the card they kept trying to bill and report them to my bank as frauds. They are being investigated. I hope this company goes bankrupt.

CRYSTAL M

3 — 

Great Start but Poor Followup

My website is currently undergoing a redo to be replaced with an e-commerce platform. I also have several other sub-domains that have been left untouched for quite a while (because I finally got the web domains I wanted and am just waiting for the others to expire). Mostly I use the others for email. Great price, customer service and tech support from the start which was several years ago and before all this sharing plans listed above. My monthly hosting cost went from a starting price of approximately $3 - $4 to $16.99 per month. Pay 12 months and it goes down to $14.99, 24 months down to $13.49. So paying 24 months only saves $3.50 per month and I rarely have the funds to do that anyway. My domain and sub-domains, 2 at $15.99 per year, one at $16.99 per year, and one I can't remember. I did not get a domain free with the web hosting service. I pay for each separately. On the other hand, I did not have the email account limitations and the storage limit was much higher. I honestly do not know how this compares to other services. I landed on this website while I was doing a google search to see what justhost is currently offering new customers. Besides the rising cost and some downtime, my biggest complaint is the customer service. When I first started with them way back when, the tech support was soooo awesome that I convinced a friend and business owner to switch to justhost. They were so helpful and pleasant, and they took their time on the phone with you. These days that is not the case. My displeasure with current circumstances has led me to search for a new host, thus landing me on this page.

Dinesh

1 — 

They are horrible! Trust me

They are horrible. I don't do anything to the website but my website goes down every month. I don't know what they do and when I call them, they start saying different things. They are not knowledgeable, not professional, and not courteous at all. Poor... pooor. ppoooor service. Nothing can be worst than them. I am going to change my hosting. These guys don't even deserve any star at all. No star for them.

Gary J

1 — 

A total fraud

After signing up with this company I had my first occasion to need tech support. I was shocked to learn that it was the exact same tech support as Bluehost. This company is just way to hide who you are really dealing with. Hate Bluehost? Then hate JustHost. No difference.

Stay away.

Peter P

1 — 

Worst Company Ever

I am so done with Justhost. Please save yourself the time and do not give them any money. There's been a problem with my account since I first signed up with them and their customer service always tries to get me to pay more money to fix simple things. My cpanel hasn't worked in months. I can't wait for my contract to be up. I've never left an angry review but that's how much passion I have for this terrible company. No amount of money saved is worth the hours on their live chat. The technical support is usually pretty decent but that's about all. BUT I WOULDNT NEED TECH SUPPORT, if things just worked. Don't sign up with JustWorst because they will literally test your faith in humanity

Kelly

1 — 

Crooks!!!

I have a small family tree service that I built a website for 13 years ago. Being a complete novice (and the little I do know being self taught) I have had to learn a ton of lessons the hard way… the first being that there’s a lot to learn.

I chose JustHost in 2013 because they were also a registrar as well as a hosting service (huge mistake) and signed up for 3 years with auto renew. Last year however as my hosting service renewed… my domain name did not and expired and in less than 2 weeks was purchased out from under me. Now as I wait out the rest of my contract with these people – my primary account name is a domain name that I no longer own and I am convinced this was NOT accidental on their part. I’ve been researching extensively since it happened and have concluded that they probably do this a lot and I wonder if the “person” who now owns my former domain name isn’t one of theirs. A simple DNS history search of kellyscuttingedge.com and I was literally sick to my stomach. I am so burned by this entire debacle that I’m considering building my own server and hosting my own website from home. There is so much more to this story, but I won’t bore everyone with a novel of details… I will just say, avoid this company like the plague! Host with ANYONE else. Just my two cents.

Kevin C

1 — 

The WORST

WORST hosting ever; WORST tech support ever; WORST company (EIG) ever. Bought an SSL cert months ago. Still isn’t working. Been in contact with them four or five times now – they KNOW they have a problem. They just keep telling me to do what hasn’t worked yet over and over and over and over again. And they’re flipping arrogant about it on tech support.

Mani

1 — 

WORST DOMAIN

Here’s my opinion of Justhost.

PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR OWN DOMAIN, NEVER EVER EVER USE THIS COMPANY.

I have been a customer for over 10 years and never have I experienced such terrible service as Justhost provides. Their support is literally non existent. Let me tell you, this company has cost me more money in downtime than all my 12 years in business.

NEVER USE THIS COMPANY

If you decide to go ahead anyway, well then good luck, you’ll see levels of terrible customer services taken to another realm.

How no one has sued this company I will never know.

Livia

1 — 

If something goes wrong, you're in trouble!

When I first started out, I fell into the too good to be true Justhost deal. I needed something cheap to get going with and for a while it was fine, however, around 18-months later it’s like their service just suddenly gave up…

I suddenly had about 30-50 spam emails coming in PER MINUTE, when I asked why they wanted me to purchase an upgrade instead of giving me a proper solution. Why was it fine for so long and then suddenly doing this when they added a “pro” version of the spam filter into their product list?

My site and emails also became blacklisted, because they were hosting explicit sites on the same server as mine and 999 other peoples sites… not great. The sites’ overall speed dropped considerably too, which pushed me over the edge on the hunt for a much better host which I luckily found. Krystal.

I still have to deal with them to this day due to those who work with me sometimes being hosted with them, or Bluehost (equally as bad!). I swiftly try to have them switch to a better web host, which works 99% of the time. Usually, this isn’t until something goes wrong and I get called in to help deal with it and try to prevent it from happening again in the future.

The support at Justhost is abysmal. They don’t listen to questions (which are written down in live chat!), they take forever to reply (be prepared for a 2hr chat session over a usually simply resolved problem), and if you get anything resolved in the first round of chats then you’re doing really well as the chat usually ends without a solution. At times it’s like they’re trying to wind you up.

We all hope nothing will go wrong, but it’s the internet and anything can happen, and when it does, it’s often BAD. Your emails could go down, your site could get hacked, you may not understand what you need to do next etc., so the tech support offered by a company should be at the top of the list. Justhost is just not worth your time or money. Trust me.

Kit

1 — 

Really Bad Hosting

I’m client on Pro Plan of JustHost 2 year ago. This is my real experience on this host:

I. JustHost is REALLY SLOW on page load and high ping. Sometimes it’s 10 sec page load even if I fully optimized website by Caching, Minifying, CDN, Image and Database Optimization.

II. I get 500 Internal Server Error often approx. 52% of HTTP statistics and also get Error 520 often when use Cloudflare CDN with JustHost. 502 Bad Gateway sometimes too, although the resources I used are low 40k file counts, 4-8GB bandwidth use per month, no CPU Throttling placed in my account, total 300 tables MySQL and less than 60 MB Database in single account.

III. In this year, my website was down 5 times. That’s too much.

IV. Backup is really bad, totally.

V. MySQL and PHP Performance is totally slow.

VI. Their DNS is also slow too.

With problematic issues I found based on real experience, I decided to migrate to other Hosting.

JustHost Pro Plan is far away from being Pro. If you want use this host, especially from outside USA, you might get a nightmare like me.
I don’t want to inveigh JustHost, but it affects my business and losing sale too much, now my toleration is out. This is my true story, wanna share you all. It’s your decision, however, to choose the right hosting for you, for me it’s mistaken decision for using JustHost.

Fabricio

1 — 

Lost data, mislead info just to renew and 10 sessions of chat, two of them lasting 2 hours each

If the slow-downs and spams of the last years were not enough, read on what they just did to me.

After 7 years being a loyal customer, last month my account was shutdown due to a payment being late. No problem, I contacted JustHost and asked if my data could still be recovered, since I was contacting in the last day of the deadline for the shutdown and would only renew in case my data would be recovered. In a chat session, an attendant said that yes, they could. I paid for a month to see if that would be the case. Nothing happened. I contacted the chat support again and informed the situation. The attendant said that no, actually all my files have been lost. I got upset, naturally. But in the middle of the session, the chat went offline. No problem, I tried a third time and after insisting on the situation, a senior specialist told that the information was incorrect: my files could be restored and in fact they were restored quite quickly to my File Manager within my cPanel.

However, my websites did not come on-line again. I did yet another fourth chat with the support team. I was told that I should only wait for the DNS addresses to be updated. Sure, I waited. After seeing that nothing happened, I tried another chat a day later. I was told the same thing again. Now, a month after that, and with yet another month paid, my sites are still offline. Guess what: today I did try another chat. I waited 20 minutes for an attendant to reply. Then, after 2 hours – yes, two hours – of chatting and waiting, I was told that my databases were missing! Yes, all my data gone. The attendant said he/she would search if there was a backup. Notice: “IF” there was backup – and I’ve been paying for that! At such point, my chat session crashed. What did I do? Tried another chat session. This time a new attendant replied quickly, but took other 2 full hours to get to the same point where I was in the previous chat. He/she went even further and said that there were no databases associated to my account since before July 27th and insisted that when the files were recovered, there were already no backups of my databases.

Well, how can that even be possible? Why there are no backups of my databases? It’s ugly either way: if JustHost didn’t keep backups of my database, only of my files, that’s absurd. If JustHost had backups of both, it would mean that the support team just restored the files and forgot to restore the databases. It seems that I was either 1) lied to when someone from the sales department said in July that if I paid the subscription the data would be restored; 2) lied to when told that my files and data were restored and that I should only wait for DNSs to be updated or 3) the support team of JustHost did recover my files, but forgot to recover my databases! This treatment is absurd, fairly offensive I should say, and will force to search for legal actions against JustHost.

Renee

2 — 

Done with JustHost

I have been with JustHost since 2009 after being disappointed with Dot5hosting and iPowerweb. When they say UNLIMITED, it’s not true. They keep deactivating my domain because of excessive MySQL tables. The problem with that is, I install my shopping cart and can barely get the site up and running and they deactivate my site, because there are excessive tables. I have another subdomain on there using a WordPress site with only 7 pages and 20 posts. So, that adds to the table count. Since I have been losing sales due to my store being deactivated, I have no choice but to find another hosting site.

I removed all MySQL tables and only had one WordPress site and 1 Magento store… they once again deactivated my site. I’ve lost sales and they are losing my business.

Their support is a joke. Either phone or chat. Chat always says 1 min wait time, but it will be about 45 mins by the time they get to you.