HostMetro Review

Consistent 1.2+ Seconds Load Times. That's Just Too Slow.

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

Hostmetro hosting review

HostMetro was recently founded in 2012 to specialize in providing only shared hosting.

They’re also one of the only web hosts with a ‘guaranteed price lock’, so your pricing doesn’t jump 200% when it’s time to renew.

In addition, they boast 99.9% uptime to round out a decent array of offers for budget-conscious customers.

But are all of these claims too good to be true?

We set up a basic WordPress test website on the HostMetro ‘Mega Max Plan’ back in June of 2015. Over the course of the past few months, we’ve monitored and analyzed their performance, compiling the most important results including uptime & speed to be able to provide you with this unbiased review.

Let’s get started:

Pros of Using HostMetro Hosting

HostMetro’s ‘Price Lock Guarantee’ is one of the more innovative offerings we’ve seen after reviewing almost thirty different web hosting companies. What else do they offer besides low prices?

1.Decent Customer Support

Our experience with HostMetro’s customer support started pretty well. Their agents connected quickly and answered all of our questions in a timely manner.

HostMetro Support
Our chat with a customer support agent on HostMetro

Unfortunately, our background checks show generally mixed reviews about the availability (and effectiveness) of their customer support department.

  • “We are unable to log in to our c-panel and email is not working. We have tried contacting your online support and no one is picking up. Will anyone of you explain to me what’s happening?”
  • “Your customer service is terrible! I am definitely looking for a new host. I was told you would get my site reactivated so I could fix things re the plugins. It hasn’t been done. This has happened sooo many times and I am done.”
  • “Hello guys, this is almost days now our websites are down and we are getting no help, taking 24hrs to reply for a ticket? I want help soonest, I can’t even reach you on call.”
  • “What seems to be the problem with your support? I can’t get hold of anyone over the phone and it’s almost two hours wait. I can’t even connect with your chat support. And your email support is very slow. We are having an issue with our emails and I want somebody to fix it for me.”

2. Price Lock Guarantee (!)

Most hosts suck you in with a ridiculously low rate the first time you sign up with them. When your plan is up and it’s time to renew, that low rate disappears and your price can double or even triple seemingly overnight.

HostMetro bucks that trend though, guaranteeing your initial registration rate – even for future renewals!

That’s a tremendous deal, offering a huge price advantage if you plan on sticking with them long-term.

3. Free Website Transfer (With Limitations)

HostMetro will happily migrate your existing website over to their servers for free.

BUT…

Only if it doesn’t exceed 3GB. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

And the site transfer needs to be requested within 30 days of creating an account.

If you’re unhappy, you can always take advantage of their 30-day, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee.

4. 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

The Terms of Service page for most hosts is where optimism goes to die.

What seemed like such a good deal at first quickly starts turning into a nightmare as you read one questionable policy after another.

However, every now and then you come across something positive that restores your faith in some companies.

Buried inside HostMetro’s Terms is their Uptime Guarantee policy.

If their annual uptime average falls below 99%, you’ll get a free month of hosting credited back to your account. Even though this mark is lower than the average uptime we’ve seen across 30 hosts, it’s still a good policy that shows they stand behind their service.

A few standard exceptions apply, too, even if they’re fairly common. If one-off events like a natural disaster or big hack take place, this downtime won’t be factored into the uptime average calculation.

5. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

If you’re unhappy at any time during your first 30-days as a new HostMetro customer, you can ask for a full refund. Overall, that’s a great thing.

Just keep in mind that there are a few issues that can affect your refund amount.

First, refunds only apply to hosting plans. So that means other add-ons, like backup services, or domain names aren’t refundable.

The good news about domain names is that if you paid for one, you can take it with you to another host.

However, if you were given a free one through HostMetro, that normal cost can be reduced from your refund balance. They can also subtract the cost of free SSL certificates, too. Make sure to double-check your plan when getting these ‘free’ extras, because they could come back to literally cost you when it’s time to ask for a refund.
Hostmetro money back

Cons of Using HostMetro Hosting

HostMetro has a few things to like. Especially that ‘price lock guarantee.’

Unfortunately, their service can’t match the value of that offer.

Starting with their page loading times:

1. Slow Page Speeds

Over the last 24 months, HostMetro somehow managed to put up page loading times of 1,116ms.

That makes HostMetro four times slower than our fastest host A2 Hosting.

Considering a single second delay can result in 7% fewer conversions, HostMetro might cost you more in lost sales than actually paying for their service.

The worst part is that they’ve been consistently below average almost every single month. So it wasn’t like there was one bad month that brought down their results. No, they’re just THAT good at being bad.

Last 12-month average load time:

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

2. WELL Below Average 99.81% Uptime

And the hits keep coming. HostMetro delivered below average uptime of 99.81% over the past 24 months.

The only silver lining with the performance this bad is that they’ll (reportedly) credit your account with an additional month of hosting if they fall below their promised 99.9% uptime.

Before jumping at that offer, consider this: An hour of downtime per month could cost you a lot more visitors, conversions, and therefore sales and money than what you get credited back by HostMetro.

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • January 2020 average uptime: 99.98%
  • December 2019 average uptime:99.69%
  • November 2019 average uptime: 99.59%
  • October 2019 average uptime: 98.91%
  • September 2019 average uptime: 99.94%
  • August 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
  • July 2019 average uptime: 99.90%
  • June 2019 average uptime: 99.57%
  • May 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
  • April 2019 average uptime:99.83%
  • March 2019 average uptime: 99.94%
  • February 2019 average uptime: 99.84%
HostMetro last 24-month statistics
HostMetro average uptime | See stats

3. “Free” Backups Actually Cost You

Backups are an essential feature because issues will undoubtedly pop up from time to time. Most hosts offer them in some capacity, whether free or paid.

HostMetro’s Terms say that they offer “free backup services as a courtesy.”

Sounds awesome, right? Having regular backups on hand can save you a lot of hassles if your site gets hacked.

But there are three big problems with this claim:

  1. This backup service only runs once a month. (Ideally, you should have daily or weekly at a minimum.)
  2. They will only backup 1 GB of size. That’s not very large, to be honest, so you’ll probably pass this at some point.
  3. And worst of all, to restore the backup, it’s going to cost you $39.95.

That’s right: the “free backup service” isn’t actually free if you need it.

4. Only Shared Hosting

HostMetro only offers two shared hosting plans. No VPS, no cloud, or dedicated hosting options are available.

That will make it tough to scale your existing infrastructure if you outgrow things quickly, forcing you to move to another web hosting company in the near future if you get to that point.

5. Restrictive FREE Domain Offer

They offer a free domain name when signing up, but ONLY if you use their “FREE DOMAIN” coupon code.

Domain name renewals (or purchasing additional ones) will set you back with an additional $14.49, which is more expensive than many other major domain name registrars.

6. ‘Setup Fee’ on Monthly Plans

HostMetro does offer a true month-to-month hosting plan. The bad news is that the rate jumps significantly (compared to locking in a long-term plan) and you’ll also have to pay a setup fee of $14.49.

5. Short-Term Plans More Expensive

HostMetro advertises a $2.95/monthly price. However, to get that price, you’re going to need to sign up for a full three years.

There is no plan that’s shorter than a year in length. And even that one year option will cost $4.95/month.

HostMetro's pricing gets cheaper for the longer term you purchase.

HostMetro Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

HostMetro only offers shared hosting. Here’s a quick overview of their shared hosting plans:

Mega Max Plan Super Max Plan
Pricing $2.95/month $6.95/month
Websites Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered
Storage Unmetered Unmetered
Email Accounts Unlimited Unlimited
Other Features – •Free SSL and SiteLock Security

Quick Facts

  • Ease of Signup: The signup process is a bit difficult. This could be easier.
  • Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal.
  • Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: Accounts are limited to 200,000 inodes, 10 percent CPU, and memory. In the event that you exceed this limit, your account might be suspended and you won’t be eligible for a refund.
  • Upsells: A few upsells.
  • Account Activation: It can take a long time. You can make activation instant by paying a $5 fee.
  • Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Easy 1-click install of popular apps and CMSs with Softaculous.

Do We Recommend HostMetro?

Nope.

HostMetro’s customer service is inconsistently decent. Their ‘price lock guarantee’ is pretty cool. Otherwise, that’s about the nicest thing we can say about them.

HostMetro comes with one of the slowest page loading speeds we’ve ever seen. Considering site speed influences – not just user experience, but also your search engine rankings and conversions on your website – there’s a serious danger to your bottom line (read: income) here.

Their uptime is pretty bad as well. Consistently below average, with lengthy downtimes that can disrupt access at critical moments.

Honestly, there are lots of web hosts out there that will give you MUCH better page loading times, more stable uptime, and better customer service for the same (or less) bucks.

Have you ever used HostMetro? If so, please leave a review below. We welcome all reviews, whether good or bad, as long as they’re transparent and honest.

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24 user reviews for HostMetro

Sharon

4 — 

Problems now solved

I moved my web hosting account to HostMetro in October. I had problems with the former web hosting entity defederation (detaching) of my email address that had to go through ICANN. This process needs to be a step-by-step process on the website for customers to avoid unnecessary delays.

1. I finally asked for a way to access my email on HostMetro website and got it (wish it was obviously available).

2. Then I received an invitation to have a rep access my computer remotely. Through quite a bit of trial and error, Conner succeeded when others have tried. Yea!

I give high marks for the customer service I have encountered but do wish I could have had these two services three weeks ago instead of agonizing about steps, imap settings, ports, authentication, etc. I am computer literate but can't negotiate too far with these types of issues that continue to fail.

Thanks again for solving my problem.

Dennis M

5 — 

Not me...

I have been using HostMetro for a few years now on a few different sites and have had great luck with with them. When i call tech support, I get an answer in a timely manner... yes, I have to be "on hold" for a bit, but someone will answer and they will deal with the issues i have. So far very few! I even had to do a cancellation of a new hosting service I set up for a client... I got a refund promptly. Perhaps I am 'one of the lucky ones" but they've been spot on for me. Sorry others have not had a similar experience.

Tomas

1 — 

Fraud

1.) If you want to cancel your services there - Good luck! Very complicated and messed up, they have to approve it. It takes days.
2.) Even when you think you cancelled it, you may have not, just like in my case.
3.) When you want to double make sure that they won't charge. You cannot delete your credit from their system. It's there forever. Btw, is that even legal?
4.) So, they end up charging you whether you are for it or not.
5.) Of cours, no refund!

Traci L

1 — 

They hosted my site

Unbelievable. I noticed my site was down and contacted support. They told me they retired that IP address “a long time ago”. At no time did they notify me that the site was being moved, and apparently it wasn’t, after all. My URL points to a dead IP address. They didn’t make a backup, nothing. And when I asked about it, they answered my question with this information and closed the ticket as if they had solved my problem. I lost many hours of work and they don’t even apologize.

Lyndsey

3 — 

VIRUSED

For the past 2 months, they have continuously ignored my support tickets regarding the ongoing viruses spreading all over my files. I deleted one WordPress website because the problem wasn’t going away and affecting all my websites. I have to explain to customers that their website is infected. Pfff bloody hard work.

William

1 — 

Leaving Hostmetro after last straw

After a major event this spring that led to a two week downtime – yes – TWO WEEKS for all 5 of my web sites and email, I took a chance and moved my sites to a different server. Well that worked well for a while and then the problems started again. Then, like another reviewer here, I started seeing spammers use my email servers. Somebody in India started spamming via one of my email accounts. I traced the culprits and reported them and alerted tech support for over a period of several weeks. I found the culprits but HM CS did nothing but make excuses.

I think somebody was offended when I commented on some of their support being overseas in India and that it went against what it said on their web site main page “US Support”. The very next day I started seeing spammers from three ISP’s in India run messages through my account. Then, just a few days ago I discovered a rogue email account had been added to my site and I reported that also. I asked them to remove it and got zero cooperation – just a lame excuse that cPanel lets them do that.

Their response today was not even denial, but an out and out deflect to a lecture on virus prevention on my own systems. HM’s CS staff simply ignored my concern for server security and I get the impression that their attitude now is that they can do no wrong.

I also would not recommend this company to anyone either; there’s nothing there to be proud of any more.

Michael M

1 — 

This is not the hosting company you want

The above evaluation is pretty accurate. I would rate their customer treatment and tech support a bit lower but overall they nailed it.

This is a very poor hosting provider.

I used them for three years and they continually got worse with up-time, speed, and customer service response. I used this account for only personal email and always very secure passwords for the c-panel and the email accounts. I decided to leave them after I discovered my account was being used for spam mailing and they could do nothing about. They blamed the problem on my computer being infected but as soon as I moved off of their host server the problem stopped. They will not provide access to management or tech’s so any problems you experience cannot be escalated when they are not solved. They generally reply with canned messages and I found many times they had not even read what the real problem was. I was told they had moved me to a different email IP address and when a few weeks later the problem still persisted they told me I had just been moved to a new email IP address it was the same one they said I had been moved to earlier. Although I talked with a few admin’s that seemed to know what they were doing I experienced more that seemed clueless and some that were very rude. I’m not convinced they have any fully qualified tech’s working for them. Several months ago they had what they call a server hardware failure. It took a full week for them to get my account back on line which is unacceptable.

I also found out their 30 day money back guarantee is only valid on your original sign-up. If you sign-up for another year on an existing account and then decide to leave within 30 days of renewal they will not give you your money back.

This hosting company is no bargain so use at your own risk. I do not recommend.

Paul

3 — 

The Worst Hosting Company

STAY Wide away from this hosting company HostMetro. It’s the worst hosting service and the slowest there help and advice is the worst when something goes wrong its your fault not their. I had to move two of my websites to new server just to slow loading. They said it were my websites, but guess what, they are super fast now that I have moved. So please stay wide away they promise you so much and it's all lies.

Beau

1 — 

Consistently horrible

I did agree with the review on this page that says the customer service is ‘inconsistently decent’. There is nothing inconsistent about their customer service. I’ve had many major problems that I’ve had to contact customer service about. It is always a horrible experience. While some companies believe that the ‘customer is always right’, Hostmetro seems to believe the opposite. On two occasions the company deleted all my files. The logs proved it was not my fault. However, both times they wanted me to pay to get them restored. They will tell you to call in to get things resolved even though their phone system has been ‘under construction’ for months and does not allow people to talk to anybody. Based on my experience, I believe they intentionally try to scam people.

Sarath B

3 — 

HostMetro is budget friendly, but not SEO Friendly

I have been using HostMetro for the past one year, but I was not happy with their speed. The only factor keeping me attached to them were their low-priced plans. It is only good for very small websites.

ABCDiamond

3 — 

Goods and Bads of Hostmetro

Hostmetro has limitations on space and bandwidth. My current one (Mega Max plan) shows:
Disk Space Usage 6.61GB / 10GB
Monthly Bandwidth Transfer 37.51GB / 100GB
This shows a disk space of 10GB and bandwidth of 100GB per month.

My main issue though is the i/o usage which is also limited, I show two examples here, at different times:
I/O Usage 5 / 1024 KB/s
I/O Usage 1024 / 1024 KB/s

The second one caused my site to be offline, with a message via a 3rd party check of: “Your site is responding intermittently, or extremely slowly. This can indicate an overloaded, under-powered, or misconfigured server. Your site is probably loading for some users, but not for everyone.”

And then later I get the 3rd party update of “Your site was down for approximately 13 mins, but is up again as of Sunday, April 30, 8:41 am.”

I have 2 installations of Hostmetro, one with a single simple site has no problems, the other, with 4 domains on it is having enough problems to make me reconsider the hosting, or not have as many sites on one hosting package.

I though the value was good, as I paid $53.10 for 3 years. It maybe OK for one site, but it appears not for more than one or two small sites...

Hostmetro did a free transfer from my old host, even though I had about 7GB of data etc.
I’ve been with them on the 2nd hosting for about 5 weeks.

Support for setting up was actually very good, even after I had paid.

BB

1 — 

Overloaded Server Results In Website & Email Losses for Weeks

In November 2016 and Late-March, Early April 2017 a server went down causing what HostMetro says were about a thousand customers to lose their websites, etc. for 2-3 weeks and 10-12 days respectively. One would have thought that they might learn from the first debacle… but no, they are probably attempting to resolve the server dysfunctions on the cheap. Who knows when it might happen again?

I hope more customers left this company or if not, understood the odds of more downtime in the future. The company denies any liability and compensates customers with a month or so of ‘free’ subscription extensions. Imagine! You can lose thousands of dollars of business and they give you rationalizations and extra months of exposure to lousy service!

MRP

1 — 

Hostmetro is the worst hosting provider in the world

Hostmetro is the worst hosting provider in the world. It is slow, support is bad and at the end of March 2017 they had a problem with a server and have not been able to solve it yet. Do not use it is very slow and does not respond by the information on their servers.

Javier

1 — 

Near a month without mail service

On 26th march 2017 we submit a ticket to Hostmetro customer support because no one of domains we hosted with them was working…
After they try to repair and reinstall the OS because the shared server experienced a corrupt software failure (???)… Because on 500 server error on march 30th….
No mailboxes at all… still on april 5th
Well… with a FCSK they shurely fix it…. But on april 11th, still the same…

Magic solution!!: they change us to a new brand server and sent the login details to our mailbox… but we can’t read this without the new login details because aur mailboxes aren’t working!!
You need to be a soothsayer!!

New brand Hostmetro server is not working, our mailboxes still got authorization issues, and we are on April 15th, and still without mailboxes and shurely loosing all our important emails…

This is not a HOSTMETRO but a HELLMETRO

CAUTION!! Be aware with them!

BS

1 — 

Hostmetro is the worst hosting provider in the world

It was a nightmare hosting my websites at Hostmetro. Initially they were a bit smooth, but as soon as their money back guarantee period was over, problems started popping up. Most of the times I could find that the websites had a network error:

Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT

I tried contacting them, but they came up pointing other client side factors for the issue like the speed of the ISP and distance of the client from the their server, etc. In my cPanel I could see usage bars marked as red under ‘memory’, ‘process’ and ‘cpu usage’ most of the time. When asked for it, they wanted to describe it to be a bug of cPanel x3 theme and cloud Linux.

The final words from me about choosing Hostmetro would be ‘NO’ or ‘DO NOT’ choose them. You would be paying them the money (how less it might be) to buy some headaches and unwanted issues. If there was an option for negative value in the rating above, then I might have done that.

l2r

1 — 

Hosting server down and no access to data since 14+ days

The hosting account is inaccessible since last week of March 2017 with no access to hosted add-on domains sites, no access to business emails and no ETA.

This is the worst situation I have seen with any hosting services in my 6-7 years of hosting experience with various companies.

Yatin

1 — 

Down for more than 2 weeks now

We have hosted services with HostMetro and just had renewal for another 3 years but since 15 days + the services are down for us and no access to corporate (small business) emails nor the site nor add-on domain site.

We had to immediately get new hosting services somewhere else, but our old data is hostage (not accessible) with Hostmetro and until they restore the data and make a server available to access it, we are stuck.

Paul S

1 — 

YOU be the judge

HostMetro has been down for 3 days. You be the judge. Do you want your business website down for 3 days (and counting)? Is that reasonable?

Hostmetro thinks so. Other hosts would replace a server in hours let alone 3+ days. It will be interesting to see just how many days the server is down. It was down last weekend too, but only for 6 hours or so. In the meantime, I’ve already moved everything to Webhostface who use Solid State Drives. Speedtests show my sites at 95% to 99% faster than most. Everything is a lot faster now.

Nick

1 — 

Wouldn't trust Host Metro at all

Hostmetro, where to start! Customer service is very unhelpful and not willing to help or even consider helping you with any issues. I had asked for my service to be cancelled numerous times before, but of course did not get a response.

Then $88.90 gets taken from my bank account for the service requested to be cancelled. I emailed them with a nice long email to get the service cancelled and money refunded, but the responses from them were far from what you expect from a company who has had a client for 3 years now!

The service is laughable all round for this company and I would not recommend it to anyone wanting something professional for their website!

Marc

3 — 

Worst host company ever

Signed up to do hosting – come to find out if your users use the wrong FTP user / password – their firewall locks out that IP – forever — no way to see it, no way to know it, just very restrictive. No other host I have ever used has this restriction set this tight.

Brought it to their attention, they refused to do anything, nor refund any of my money. Was told that “this is just how it is” and that was that.

Spencer P

1 — 

It's A TRAP!

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY! Try calling their 800 number. Oh? It doesn’t work. Guess what. It’s a fake recording telling you to use their chat. What about their contact page where you can find their address? Oh wait… A 404 not found error. Everything about this garbage company is a scam. Save your money.

No matter how good of a deal you think this is, spend the extra few dollars so you don’t have to deal with this ABOMINATION OF A COMPANY. I would rather stick my hand in the garbage disposal and turn it on than spend one more minute hosting with this company.

Jay

2 — 

Cheap, but not recommended

I truly enjoy their ‘price lock guarantee’, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are poor. What I mean by poor is that my websites (2) are often really slow and occasionally I’m seeing them offline.

My advice: Don’t make that mistake to go with a cheap host, it doesn’t cover the pain that you feel when you see your sites loading slowly and being offline.

David

1 — 

Worst host ever... AVOID

I have been with Hostmetro for just over a year. If you want a webpage to load, do not buy any of their packages.

On average, while monitoring my websites, they get around 4000ms response time. As for their wild guarantees of 99% uptime, this is a real joke. They struggle to get 97% uptime.

They also recently suspended my whole account as one of my websites had high resource usage. Why couldn’t they just stop one website that caused the issue. Instead they caused my other hosted websites to go down.

I paid for 3 years upfront which was a mistake as they say if I cancel my account I will not get a refund for the 20 months I have left. AVOID AT ALL COSTS! THIS HOST IS WORSE THAN USELESS.

Daniel

1 — 

Say NO to HostMetro

After wasting my time + money for months, I finally decide to leave this rubbish company: HostMetro.

I had to admit HostMetro’s cheap prices attracted me at first. Their initial services seemed to meet my websites. However, half to one year later, I felt very slow connections which stopped the normal payment process of the sites. I requested their helps many times, but they pushed me with lots of irrelevant excuses during the past months.

Yesterday I found my SSL in the valid period was gone without any reason. I sent several help tickets in a day without any responses. That’s their boasted 24/7 services. That’s the way they treated long-term customers who had sent them money for years! They know you can’t get our money back so they don’t care about you!

Now it’s all over. My websites are back to normal. Bye-bye, HostMetro.com.
Hoping my bloody lesson might alarm you: stay away from HostMetro!