Arvixe was founded by Arvand Sabetian in 2003, before later being acquired by EIG (who owns a TON of other hosting companies including Bluehost and even HostGator) in 2014.
At that time, Arvixe had over 150,000 domains and 70,000 hosting accounts, with 80 full-time employees and contractors located around the world.
While initially founded in San Luis Obispo, CA, they also have data centers in North America (Dallas), Europe (Amsterdam), and Asia (Hong Kong).
Common sense is that being acquired by a huge, experienced conglomerate with deep pockets should give you greater resources to deliver better service.
Unfortunately, after reviewing many of their companies, we’ve seen the contrary to be true. Being acquired by EIG seems more like a hosting graveyard than a rebirth.
But we love being proved wrong!
We purchased the Arivxe ‘Personal Class Plan’ back in June 2015, set up a basic WordPress website to test their performance, and make this review as adequate as possible.
Over the past few years, we’ve collected detailed statistics like uptime & speed, to objectively compare their performance with nearly thirty other hosting companies.
Here’s an unbiased overview of what we have found
Pros of Using Arvixe Hosting
To be honest, Arvixe’s ‘PROs’ list isn’t very long. Here’s a quick recap of their benefits:
1. Advanced Plan Features
Arivxe isn’t the cheapest host out there…
But at least they do include more advanced features on all of their basic plans that you’d normally have to pay much more with other hosts. For example, their cheapest shared hosting plan has unlimited storage and bandwidth standard. They will even allow you to use up to six domain names.
They will also include free Google, Yahoo, and Bing ad credits, which is a nice added bonus if you’re already thinking about using online ads to grow your business or readership.
2. Numerous, Proactive Security Options
Arvixe also includes a variety of proactive security measure to help you to protect your site. For example, their plans come with:
- SpamAssassin
- Spamhaus&
- SpamCop Checks
- Domain Keys
- SPF for email security
In addition, they also offer daily (!) backups, brute force detection, nightly security updates, a firewall, SSL support and SSH access too.
If all that won’t give you peace of mind, I’m not sure anything will.
3. Free cPanel Site Migrations
Arvixe treats new customers right. Instead of trying to make a few extra bucks by charging you extra for site transfers, they’ll happily just take care of them for you — as long as your current host provides cPanel access.
There’s no cost for multiple sites, either. So you can save hours (and potentially hundreds of dollars) by leaning on Arvixe to help you out.
4. No Renewal Price Increases
Arvixe also doesn’t nickel and dime new customers after their initial plan expires, either.
Think about it like this:
You go through all the pain and suffering to find a new web host right now. You move your site, domain, and everything over. You prepay for a few years to get the best deal.
Now, how likely are you to want to switch hosts again when your plan expires? Chances are, not very likely.
The problem is that many other hosts will take this opportunity to double the price right under your nose. You’re getting the same exact service, but paying way more, because they know you won’t want to change hosts at the end of the day.
Arvixe doesn’t do this, though. Your renewal pricing will be the exact same as the initial cost you signed up for. So it seems like Arvixe has your best interests in mind at the end of the day.
5. Lots of Included Security Features (At No Additional Cost)
The final pricing deception that most web hosts like to pull is to claim that they offer extra features like SiteLock security or daily backups.
So on the surface, it seems like you’re getting this amazing value.
Except, when you’re checking out, you’ll realize that almost all of these services are upsells that can easily double or triple the overall price before running your credit card.
Once again, Arvixe doesn’t stoop to these tricks. They include everything from DDoS attack response to network monitoring, firewalls, brute force detection, and nightly updates all for free.
6. 45-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Last but not least, Arvixe features a no-questions-asked refund policy. That means you can prepay for a few years to get the best bang for your buck. And you can try out their service for a full six weeks with relatively little risk.
If you’re unhappy with the page loading speed or uptime or anything else, just say the word and you’ll get your money back.
Please keep in mind that these refunds are only available for shared, reseller, and VPS hosting plans. Dedicated servers are not covered under this clause. Neither are administrative fees or extra purchases, like domain names. (No other host includes these, either, for what it’s worth.)
Cons of Using Arvixe Hosting
Arivxe’s security options, advanced plan features, and free domain name for life make up a compelling mix of extras to help to put them over the top.
Unfortunately, it’s the primary performance area of a web host that lets them down. Take a look:
1. Over 7 Second Load Times
In addition to poor uptime, Arvixe unfortunately also struggles with their page loading times.
Over the past 24 months, their average page load time was 7280ms – this is the worst load time we saw during our testing period with the other hosts.
That’s not a good result, especially considering how crucially important (yet neglected) page speeds are for the success of your website.
For example, according to Google, there’s a 90% increase in bounce probability when page load speed drops from 1 to 5 seconds.
That’s how critical site speed is. It affects usability to the point that it actually costs you in lost conversions.
Last 12-month average load time:
2. Weak Customer Support Response
Our experience with Arvixe’s customer support was rather not good.
The customer rep connected within five minutes, but replies were slow and some details that we already gave were totally ignored. So we had to repeat ourselves and ask the same question twice until we got the answer we were looking for.
Also, our past experiences with Arvixe’s support have been negative (especially with slow reply times).
3. Expensive Plans & Pricing
Arvixe’s lowest $7.70 per month plan doesn’t sound too bad on the face of it, until you realize that’s for two years, paid in full upfront.
Want a shorter time period? Month-to-month even? You’re going to be paying almost double the original price at $11 each month.
It’s nice that they throw in a few helpful extras, like the aforementioned domain name for life and unlimited bandwidth, to offset this cost. However, it’s still steep, especially considering the performance issues we discussed above.
4. Unacceptably-Low Uptime — 92.95%
During our 24 months test period, our ‘test site’ on Arvixe gave a horrible uptime.
Arvixe has a way below average uptime performance over the last 24 months, coming in at 92.95%.
Last 12-month average uptime:
- January 2020 average uptime: 100%
- December 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- November 2019 average uptime: 100%
- October 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- September 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
- August 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
- July 2019 average uptime: 100%
- June 2019 average uptime: 100%
- May 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- April 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
- March 2019 average uptime: 94.61%
- February 2019 average uptime: 82.18%
5. SSL Certificate Costs Extra ($25/year)
Websites today are practically required to use SSL certificates. Google Chrome, the most popular browser online today, actively warns people from using certain sites that don’t have them.
Overall, that’s a good thing for everybody. It helps keep your information safe and sound while you browse around.
That’s why lots of web hosts will include free SSL certificates in all of their plans now. Anyone can get a free one through Let’s Encrypt, too.
But unfortunately, you can’t get a free one through Arvixe. They’re charging another $25/year for each one.
Arvixe Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Arvixe offers two shared hosting options: Linux and Windows.
We’ll be breaking down their hosting plans for you:
Linux Shared Hosting:
Personal Class Plan | Personal Class Pro Plan | |
---|---|---|
Pricing | $7.70/month | $11.00/month |
Websites | 6 | Unlimited |
Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Storage | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Windows Shared Hosting:
Personal Class Plan | Personal Class Pro Plan | |
---|---|---|
Pricing | $8.80/month | $12.10/month |
Websites | 1 | 5 |
Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Storage | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Quick Facts
- Free domain? Yes.
- Ease of Signup: Single page sign-up. Easy sign-up.
- Money-Back: 45-day money-back guarantee.
- Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: None.
- Upsells: No upsells.
- Account Activation: Instant Activation.
- Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel for Linux hosting and WebSitePanel for Windows Hosting.
- Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Softaculous for one-click installation of apps and CMSs.
- Other Features: DDoS attack response, unmetered MySQL Databases, HTML editor, etc.
Do We Recommend Arvixe Hosting?
No, we don’t.
Arvixe has little to like. We like the security options and daily backups. The unlimited bandwidth and storage are helpful, typically only seen on more expensive plans elsewhere. A free domain name for life is a very nice touch.
However, we just couldn’t get past their poor performance in the primary three responsibilities of a web host.
Their uptime was the lowest of what we’ve seen over the last 24 months and their page loading times were very slow, which can negatively affect more than just your website visitor’s experience (your pocketbook too).
Their customer service was just not good enough.
While they may have been a great host years ago, they now closely resemble other EIG brands we’ve come across that rely on their reputation and household names (while their performance continues to get worse over time).
You’d be better off checking our top-performing hosts here to find more reliable and cheaper hosts.
Any experience with Arvixe? Please leave a comment below. We welcome all – good or bad reviews – as long as they’re honest and transparent.