HostPapa Review

It's Cheap, but High Renewal Fees And Poor Customer Support...

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

hostpapa hosting review

HostPapa hosts over 500,000 websites on its data centers in the US and Canada.

That’s impressive considering they’ve only been around since 2006 (founded by Jamie Opalchuck).

One potential explanation for their meteoric rise could be their various customer service options, offering phone support in a few different languages including English, French, Spanish, and German to both domestic and international clients.

They must be doing something right to have grown so quickly over the past few years.

In order to find out, we purchased the HostPapa ‘Starter Plan’ in June of 2015. We set-up a simple WordPress website. You can dive into its in-depth performance statistics including uptime and speed (click ‘History’ for more info).

Let’s take a look at how they measure up against the thirty other reviews we’ve done so far:

Pros of Using HostPapa Hosting

Upon signing up, we were excited to see what makes them tick. What could possibly cause such a quick ascent?

At first, we were pleasantly surprised by their great uptime (as you’ll see). They also offer a plethora of customer support options to choose from.

So far so good! But can they live up to the hype? Let’s take a look.

1. Good Uptime

We’re happy to report that HostPapa’s uptime has been good since day one.

They’ve posted a 24-month average of 99.95% uptime.

While it sounds trite and obvious, you’d be surprised just how many web hosts struggle with the most foundational element of actually hosting a website — keeping the damn thing live!

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • January 2020 average uptime: 99.99%
  • December 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • November 2019 average uptime: 99.88%
  • October 2019 average uptime: 99.70%
  • September 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • August 2019 average uptime: 99.94%
  • July 2019 average uptime: 99.95%
  • June 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
  • May 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • April 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • March 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • February 2019 average uptime: 99.63%
HostPapa last 24-month statistics
HostPapa average uptime | See stats

2. Above Industry-Average Speed

HostPapa’s uptime was great and their page loading speed is also decent.

Over the last 24 months, they had a page load time of posting a 705ms, which beats our industry-standard result.

Last 12-month average load time:

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

3. Extensive Support Options

HostPapa offers extensive support options to help customers in a variety of ways.

You can browse their huge library of self-help videos. They offer 24/7 support through phone, mail, email, and even fax (!).

They provide phone support in 18 countries (which might be the most we’ve seen from any company). They’re one of the only hosts to provide support in different languages, including English, French, Spanish, and German.

As if that’s not enough, they also provide an interesting support feature allowing you to connect in a one-on-one session with ‘Papa Squad Experts’, which are essentially guided walkthroughs using video or telephone conference (also – it’s the best customer support title ever!!).

During our own personal investigation, we received a response in less than a minute from their support staff. Answers to questions were provided within a modest two minutes.

Overall, our experience with Gezim V, our customer service rep, was pretty good.

 

HostPapa Support

4. Proactive Security Features

HostPapa’s shared hosting plans come with Panda Cloud antispam protection enabled, as well as a server firewall, monitoring, and intrusion detection. Over 37,000 websites get hacked daily, so HostPapa’s proactive security measures are reassuring.

Their Business Pro plan also comes with additional features including domain privacy protection, a free SSL certificate, a dedicated IP address, and automated website backups.

The last thing you need to worry about is security details like spam protection. It’s nice to have someone else watch your back.

5. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee & Site Migration

HostPapa offers an industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee for most of their hosting plans.

In addition, they’ll gladly help you transfer an existing website from another host (while also throwing in a free domain name too).

6. Good Value for the Price

HostPapa’s basic pricing starts at $3.95 for the first three years. If you’d rather just sign up for a year or two, it’ll be about a buck extra in both cases.

HostPapa One, Two, and Three-Year Pricing

This pricing is also lower for new customers. That means renewal pricing will increase to $7.99/month on this same Starter plan. So not the best news overall, but fairly common.

The good news is that they do throw in a lot of value for this initial pricing. You get two websites, compared to just one that most other hosts offer. You also get free domain registration, 100GB SSD storage, and unmetered bandwidth.

Pretty good, right?

But that’s not all. You’ll also get their “Essential Features” which includes a free website migration, Cloudflare CDN, SSL certificate, and access to their 400+ apps and website builder.

So overall, it’s a pretty good value. Other hosts would make you pay for this stuff, easily pushing the monthly price up well above this initial $3.95/month range.

Cons of Using HostPapa Hosting

Sure, HostPapa had good uptime and decent speed results.

Unfortunately, other customers haven’t shared the same positive experience we had. There are also some issues with hidden fees relating to just how ‘free’ the money-back guarantee and website setup really is.

Take a look.

1. Poor Customer Experience with Support

Personally, our customer support experience went smoothly.

When we conducted a background check into how other customers viewed their extensive support options, the picture wasn’t so rosy.

Despite the HUGE number of available options or avenues to reach HostPapa, the overall customer experience on average is below par.

2. Additional Fees

Most web hosts will set up your website for free. Most web hosts will also offer a ‘free money-back guarantee.’

Apparently, two rights make a wrong…

IF you DO request a refund during that 30-day window, they WILL charge you a $29.95 setup fee upon cancellation.

This means, technically, it’s not a ‘free’ money-back guarantee and it’s not a ‘free’ website setup either.

So thanks, but no thanks.

Overview of HostPapa Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Below is a quick overview of HostPapa’s three shared hosting plans.

Please note: Pricing tends to fluctuate often, and these low advertised prices required a three-year sign-up.

Starter Plan Business Plan Business Pro Plan
Pricing $3.95/month
Renews at $7.99/mo		 $3.95/month
Renews at $12.99/mo		 $12.95/month
Renews at $19.99/mo
Websites 2 Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Storage 100GB Unmetered Unmetered
Email Accounts Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Other Features – • Unlimited MYSQL Databases
• 2x More CPU and MYSQL Resources		 • 4x More CPU and MYSQL Resources
• Domain Privacy
• Automated Website Backup
• Premium Wildcard SSL and SiteLock Detect

Quick Facts

  • Ease of Signup: Very easy signup process.
  • Payment Methods: Credit Card, Paypal.
  • Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: Advertised price is only for the first payment term. Renewals are much more expensive. You will be charged a setup fee of $29.99 if you make use of their refund policy.
  • Upsells: A few upsells.
  • Account Activation: Activation can take a while.
  • Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): One-click installer to install popular apps and CMSs.

Do We Recommend HostPapa?

Unfortunately, we do not.

Their uptime was good and speed decent. They have a TON of different support options available, and we personally had a positive experience.

Digging deeper we found out that the support experience across the board is too inconsistent. And there are too many hidden fees that make their ‘low’ promotion pricing hard to stomach.

There are simply too many other good web hosts out there that give you a better bang for your buck.

Visit www.HostPapa.com

What’s your experience been like with HostPapa? We’d love to hear about it, no matter if it’s positive or negative (as long as it’s transparent and honest).

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80 user reviews for HostPapa

Brent P

5 — 

So far so good

I am new to owning a domain & setting up email, but I have tinkered with creating a page using a web builder, not to the point of publishing... The free web builder is fairly basic & restricted, but I was able to produce a passable site for my purposes. I had several minor issues publishing the page, those were handled smoothly by HostPapa. All in all I found the task wasn't too hard, or too expensive. Now to see what the future holds for a new company under the rule of Covid19 - Good luck to us all

Christian N

5 — 

Very good customer services

Their customer service is nothing but excellent, and also the IT department is always available 24/7 and to help customers.

Wilbert

5 — 

Customer Service

I've been with them for many years. Price is fair and they have always been able to find a solution for my desires and issues.

ISKO A

5 — 

Highly recommended, at a reduced price

I have been using their plans for several years and I can highly recommend it. However, I must say that for the use I make of it (little) I could only recommend it to someone like me, if you get it at a very reduced price (Cyber Friday).

William S

5 — 

Support desk folks make HostPapa sing!

I came to HostPapa from a truly awful hosting site that continued to bill me for a Gone Forever site after they had a meltdown. I had to struggle to get paid back.

HostPapa has a decent package for my needs of unlimited upload space, as I maintain a number of "fan pages" for my interests.

Every single problem I encountered along the way, from subtle effects of PHP and HTTPS, or Ajax or Database or Javascript flavours ... I solved quickly with the help of the folks on chat and via Support Tickets.

For a medium-skilled self-taught web page maker, HostPapa supplied everything they promised, and more. I am happy to pay my invoices!

A sample, hideously over-loaded page from my collections: https://u18192288.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=nRHndAzEw6sx3ml-2FtTG4UX-2BiOVckjuCqb-2FFh4oHSlGGuvZ5XUTe9vfU0ZUJbUTPp0rXN2Qidnf5jvmKWfaF9Gw-3D-3D-PAc_gTLH2UCvs6wd4Rtx5HjX35YZny0bZ-2BHf3vmoDIwAtP-2FYT9PYnZeKPrsalN0UPl79F87kHqIU3d-2Bfq5NeF9YQVW7qQ7F11-2BNCJlTFwzq8gIUWBTzL2qg9tNmpggPbxy2RTrh4oXR9n2xxx-2BFEPd1yjHA9DaXJ1lNKXXfIz7LteE1qYbEmvNKqPmwJzSO1OVJGsRy3VTtyhet7H843mbnUYC-2FE3vpwMP5A2zUwiUMKTMg-3D

Priti C

5 — 

Excellent

Hostpapa is a superb website/domain service provider. Their assistance for setting up or resolving any issues is unbelievable. They are very quick. I have two websites from them. I have also recommended it to some of my friends.

Brooke M

5 — 

Amazing customer service

I've been with Hostpapa for around 3 years now after using other services in the past, they're amazing. Whether contacting from the UK or Aus they are always happy to help and have people there on call whenever you need!

Annemarie O

5 — 

Great Tech Support - Thanks!

I transferred my .com.au domain name to HostPapa and found them really helpful to get everything set up. It did take some time, and a few different contacts back with HostPapa tech support to organise the new redirects and domain name changes, but in the end, they sorted out all my issues and my automatic redirect is working and they are a lot cheaper than I used to pay. Thanks a lot to the team.

John

1 — 

Stay away if you consider yourself intelligent

I read reviews that said Hostpapa support was great and I believed them. This review is somewhat reflective of some of the experiences I've had. Sometimes you will receive a reply from a support request within a few hours. They prefer support via email and usually will answer in about 12 hours. If the support request is brain-dead easy then usually their replies are correct. If it involves even a minute amount of complexity then your support issue can be dragged out for days. If you're considering Hostpapa to host your business website and you are having issues expect it to be down for days. I'm currently dealing with an issue that is now in it's 7th day. I've received conflicting suggestions on which is the correct setting I should use from different support people. None of them worked. I've received the same suggestion fix that failed 2 days ago because the support person couldn't be bothered to read the support thread. I sometimes will receive a support reply well past midnight. I will reply to that email and then must wait another 24 hours for a response. Twice I've been promised a phone call at a specific time and I cancelled plans and waited for the call, but both times no one called. If you tell them you want to purchase one of their products, you will get a call within an hour. They want your money but couldn't care less about you or your website.

Steve Z

5 — 

Impressive!

I recently moved my account to Host Papa and was very impressed with both the speed and ease in which my websites were migrated. Fine and attentive tech support and 24/7 online help were greatly appreciated. All in all, a very good experience.

Brian

1 — 

Worst customer service imaginable

Been with HostPapa for 1 years, since LunarPages moved us to them. They are HORRIBLE!! Any outage you have, will be +3 to +4 additional hours due to their poor response time. We one time had a NIC failure, and were down for about 12 hours. We tried to get answers for why it took so long, but all they did was keep passing us around until we gave up looking for an answer. Recently, they moved us to a new frame, and without telling us, cloned our old machine and kept it up and running. The automated processes kept running, billing all of our customers. I tried to get support from them to figure out how this happened, and it was non existent. I asked for our account rep to talk to us, but they never did. We have an outage right now due to Windows not starting after a maintenance reboot. We are going on hour #4 of downtime. NOT WORTH THE SAVINGS if you care about uptime.

CK

5 — 

Super Good 10/10

Been using hostpapa for 3 months now. No technical issues at all, all my sites have 100% online, and supercheap! I came from a much more expensive host, who were slow to support me, HostPapa are there immediately for any questions I have. 10/10

Jacek

5 — 

Simply the best!

Twenty years of various hosts with various success rates until Hostpapa bought LunarPages whom I was about to dump and lo and behold, my web life has changed dramatically and significantly. The speed of their solid state servers is blazing and their customer support is outstanding; the best in twenty years without a doubt. I cannot recommend them more highly. If you're thinking about changing RUN, don't walk to do so!

Martin J

4 — 

Reliable service -

I've been using Hostpapa for over five years now. I've tried others and been disappointed. Hostpapa has given me good support and provides some useful, efficient facilities. I particularly like their file manager and appreciate the ability to add sub-domains at minimal cost.

Server performance and reliability is satisfactory. I recommend Hostpapa without reservation

Ed A

5 — 

Personal Website - HostPapa Servers My Needs

Mine is a personal website, nothing fancy, except that I do use the SQL database functionality for a project. Everything works well. I have had to learn some technical stuff in order to use functionality beyond simple HTML web pages. That said, HostPapa support people have always enthusiastically helped me with my needs.

I am having issues once in a while with my emails being tagged by antispamcloud.com as spam. It is because I do have a couple of "large" groups that I send emails to. The number of recipients in one group is around 90 and the other is mid-60. As I understand it, antispamcloud.com perceives the volume and frequency as spam. Hostpapa support resolves the issue within about a day. Then, the emails to those recipients using the spam service resumes. I don't know enough about the spam tagging algorithm to know if I can do anything different to avoid being tagged.

I am very satisfied with HostPapa for my web hosting service provider!

Marie

2 — 

Get ready for endless emails

I was a long time customer of LunarPages (10+ years) before HostPapa bought and incorporated them. LP had its issues, especially with customer support, but HostPapa is a completely different story.

I'm not an advanced user, but I've had sites for years, so I know the basics of maintaining them. When my 3yr plan needed renewal during COVID, I asked to be switched to a 3 month plan as a pause.

That process couldn't be done via my portal. I had to call, and chat, and email over a good two weeks and still most of the replies were scripted when all I asked for was "Can you switch my plan".

Oh, and when I switched back, wow, could they do that SUPER FAST. But be prepared, they will email you 5 times a day, even CALL YOU, though you have two weeks to pay (because I was still on my previous 3 month plan). It was borderline harassment and they emailed saying 'let us know when you are going to pay and we'll stop the email blasts.'

Yeah, they lost me as a renewing customer. After this plan I am out.

George M

5 — 

Top Company

Message Body: Very friendly and experienced customer and technical support teams. HostPapa offers 30 min training sessions for people who have no experience in building websites.

Thumbs up!

Nay L

1 — 

Avoid HostPapa or you will suffer

I hosted my site with HostPapa for the past 3 years+. My site voluntarily shares teaching and learning aids to teach and learn Burmese. The content is controlled by subscription (free of charge). The site has a very sparse activity. Less than 5 active users in a month. After 3 years passed, I took another 3 years subscription. Then they started to show their way of making business. They sent the email "Your website performance is being negatively impacted and is due for a suspension". I have been trying to reach you in regards to a high resource consumption of your account. As we have not heard back from you, I am afraid your account will be suspended in 2 days for violation of our Terms of Service - Disruptive Use Policy (Section 6.2). For more information, please review the terms of service for your region here:https://www.hostpapa.com/terms/ We understand the negative impact that this will cause and we would gladly help you avoid service interruption and discuss the most suitable solutions in your case, so please reply back to this email within the next 48 hours.....After I have been disturbed with a series of emails, I put my site in maintenance mode. After putting the site in the maintenance mode for a couple of weeks, they suspended my site. They just want to take away my new 3 years subscription using this approach. I regretted renewing my subscription.

Philip S

4 — 

Good experience building a new website

I needed a simple and cost effective website. But I had little experience in pulling a website together. I looked at several review sites (specifically for Australia). I selected Hostpapa as it had all the tools I needed - flexible templates, hosting, ability to obtain a unique domain and the facility to include an email linked to the domain. I checked Hostpapa and 2 other sites before signing up. I looked at templates and costs and read customer reviews.

Signing up was easy with the basic and most simple plan. I had checked out the ability to get the Domain name I wanted - this was basically the same cost as other host sites I looked at.

Once I had the Domain name, I was onto building the website. I spent a few hours looking at the templates and selected the one I felt best addressed my needs. Then I built it up - this part was enjoyable and easy, even though I had no experience. I did watch a few Host Papa tutorials to help but most of it was just carefully thinking the steps through.

On the template, I uploaded my own images, reshaped pages, deleted pages in the template and added others, I changed the font, I altered background colours, I added links. I launched. I could see I needed to change a few things and I was able to do that easily, without losing what I had done.

The next thing I did was add an email linked to my Domain site. Here I found it a little more confusing, but this was because I had never done anything like this before and I was not familiar with the terminology and the process. Here, I reached out to the HostPapa Tech support - they worked me through the issues promptly and efficiently. It was all sorted in a timely manner. I could not have been more happy with the response, advice and help.

I've only had my website up for 3 days. I've been impressed with the service so far and the site I have addresses my needs. The web hosting is for 3 years, I'll have some annual fees but these seem reasonable. I know after my initial discounted fee it will increase. Based on my experience so far I'd highly recommend HostPapa.

A B

1 — 

Prefers to upsell rather than solve issues

Technically more or less competent. Minimal downtime.

However for four small WordPress websites, I've had no end of issues, and technical support has been slow and seems to follow a script, despite the fact I sent a detailed list of all the tasks I've done over the last 6 months.

Their philosophy seems more keen to move you to the next most expensive package.

Happy they refund contracts when there are technical issues but unhappy about the overall process and the fact they won't refund the credit note from forcing you to upgrade a few months earlier.

Not recommended, seems unable to host basic wordpress sites, which are fully hardened, hidden, cron jobs over hauled and the website have had most of the content stripped away.

The final straw was from tech support and i quote "I can see some high CPU and memory usage under your account. This seems mostly related to your WordPress sites."

Well yes i only have WordPress sites as part of your WordPress only hosting package.

Look elsewhere.

Rod

1 — 

Shifting Sands

I have been using Hostpapa for a few years on a basic hosting/email plan without an issue. A month ago I had someone from their Account Manager dept contact me saying we're well over our allowed usage levels (Like 10x or more). This came out of the blue...we must have been over for a year or more.. so I asked for upgrade options but these options were basically unaffordable for our small business so I moved things around to reduce the usage levels and comply with their basic plan (500Mb max mailbox size). After I did this they then suspended our account anyway just because I didn't respond to their email saying we would comply and not upgrade. This caused mass disruption and I had to contact hostpapa support and beg them to re-enable our account. Took about 30-40mins for the services to re-enable. They really need to re-look at their business model. Changing provider..

Punnadhammo

5 — 

Happy Client

We are a Buddhist Hermitage and Retreat Centre located near Thunder Bay. Our website is important to us for reaching the larger community. About three years ago we were becoming dissatisfied with our previous host and one of our supporters suggested Host Papa. We are now very happy that we made the change. I would specify two main reasons why I like Hostpapa:
1. Tech Support - Whenever we have had technical problems we found the HostPapa tech people very fast to respond, courteous, knowledgeable and helpful. Having dealt with many tech companies in the past, I know this is rare and valuable.
2. The Interface - I love the Host Papa interface. It is clean, intuitive and easy to navigate with lots of great features that make managing a web-site a snap. Keep up the good work, Host Papa!

Nick M

5 — 

Well done

Have not had to confront any hidden charges yet. Hopefully there won't be any surprises. Upselling is fine. Hostpapa have been very transparent in all the transactions so far and excellent in resolving our issues on time. We were considering another provider who was at least 3 times more expensive. As long as the team at Hostpapa can maintain these high standards, we don't think we will be moving to a different provider. Well done.

Jeff V

4 — 

Long time, no problems

I've been with HostPapa for at least 9 years (according to the oldest entry in my saved passwords) and we've had no significant problems. We've been using it more for email than web hosting until recently but no problems on either front.

I find prices decent and uptime good. If you upgrade your package they will happily apply the balance of your current package to the new one.Since we've started my brother and "sister in law" (good friend, wife's side) have joined as well and haven't had any issues.

Sarah D

5 — 

Customer Service Never Let Me Down

I have been hosting my websites with Hostpapa for more than a decade now (almost 2) and I have never had a problem with the cost or the service. In actual fact, the service has been exemplary. I simply create a ticket and a member of the team gets in touch promptly and effectively.

Allison M

5 — 

Excellent Hosting Service

Host Papa has been hosting my website for years. The uptime is great. On the rare occasion I've had a problem, the customer service is great. I have and will continue to recommend them.

cem a

5 — 

Fantastic Customer Service

We are broadcasting our Istanbul museums for tourism and culture directorate department for almost 6 month or more on this hosting service. Not only their customer service but also the server side process is amazing. I personally used many hosting companies for our government project, like GoDady, amazon and bluehost previous times. They were ok too not to complain much. Hostpapa makes a difference with problem solving orientation and a very good user interface. I recommend their service highly to everyone. thank you.

Doug R

5 — 

Long time customer

I have been a customer for something like 12 years or so. I haven't had much need for support over the years because things have always worked as they should, but when I have had questions, their customer service was always amazingly quick and thorough. I am super excited that they are supporting Kiva.org which is one of my favourite organizations. I expect to continue as a Hostpapa customer for a long time.

Jacqueline

5 — 

Fantastic Service!

I've been with HostPapa for my site hosting, from day 1 of starting my business and putting up a website - over 7 years ago now - I had no idea what I was doing and self-taught how to build a site. Back then many, many emails were sent back and forth between me and the team!! They helped me, a total novice set up my whole website using Wordpress, and integrate a business email address.

I only have my website hosted through HostPapa, no additional services.

I don't understand the negative reviews here, sounds really odd. I've had nothing but fantastic service from them. I rarely need support these days but when I do they're an email away and they get back promptly! I have never experienced "hidden fees" or any problem in their service delivery.

Thank you HostPapa, I'm glad I found you straight off the bat and very grateful for your support and service.

Leslie

1 — 

Support Integrity Issues

We have had 4 down times with hostpapa in 12 months. These are not just a few minutes, they have been hours, days, then down sometimes down again the same week.

What makes this hard to swallow is their process in dealing with customers when this happens. Wait on hold 30 minutes to be cut off, and chat support abruptly ends because of Support Agents "inactivity".

How can I make our customers feel at ease during a crash if we can't get anyone to acknowledge an obvious issue?

Roelf W

5 — 

They have never let me down

I have used a variety of hosting services over the years, for a number of websites. A number of years ago, I chose HostPapa. The next year was great - cheap hosting, with excellent support. When I had an issue, the person on the HostPapa end either dealt with it, or provided access to someone who could. I never had a problem that was not resolved within 24 hours.

Then the invoice for renewal arrived. At first, I was a bit taken aback. But then I did a bit of research. Given what I was paying for, HostPapa was in line with other providers. Given the quality of what I was getting, and the ability to put up and take down websites as I need, I was very content. So when I moved past the dollar amount to value for money, I saw that HostPapa was competitive. I renewed with a sense of satisfaction that has lasted ever since then. I get support when I need it. HostPapa has the range of options that I need.

I have, and will continue, to recommend then as a hosting service provider.

Danni

4 — 

Happy with my experience

I’ve found their customer support amazing, I’ve used NameCheap before (awful awful and never resolved anything literally just ended up doing everything myself) and 1and1 who are good but you have to request a call back most of the time and I prefer to do things over chat. Their customer support is mixed. Compared to these two Hostpapa have been amazing. Helped me with so many issues, done lots of changes to my website and gone above their duties.

The only negatives for me, my website speed has decreased since moving over. I did get a crazy cheap deal for Black Friday so I’m not sure if they’ve put me on a lower plan than normal? Also there seems to be more downtime than I experienced before. I originally moved to them due to the fact that many people said their performance was great. I’m monitoring it and will speak to customer services but they’ve always resolved things quickly for me and after using a few companies. So I’m really happy with them.

Also Bluehost weren’t great with their customer support when I needed to move my website which was why I ended up with HostPapa.

Mama

4 — 

Decent so far

I have only started with HostPapa fairly recently. I don't know why their small business plan cost the same as their starter plan, but I chose the former because I needed the extra options. The entire thing cost me slightly over a hundred for just the three year hosting plan (not including extras). I was pretty pleased about that.

Customer service is slightly spotty, but mostly good. I didn't have any trouble with the first several attempts to contact them for support. I was doing it through tickets, at first. After some time, their responses dropped off and I felt my tickets fell through the cracks, so I simply opened a live chat and explained everything to them, whereupon I received the help I needed until I no longer needed any.

Of course, my experience is limited with HostPapa, in that I am new to their service, but based on the consensus that they are overall a poor choice due to customer support, I would say that, for me, they have been good so far and that, if you are having trouble getting a response from support, try another method, especially a more direct one.

I will submit another review in future if something changes.

Teresa C

1 — 

Lunarpages .... now leaving

Our company was with Lunarpages for years...now that HostPapa has taken over I have had nothing but problems with our email accounts. Never got a "Welcome" email letting me know that Lunarpages is no longer....Only found out because our emails stopped working. That is TERRIBLE. We went for DAYS without being able to email our customers. Can no longer submit a support ticket, and have been on hold forever for customer service and I just gave up. Chat on the website didn't work either. Sent an email and finally got a reply....which didn't really help. We have our email go down at least every other day. That's it, I give up. Finding a new vendor.

Volker

1 — 

HostPapa? No, thank you.

Kicked HostPapa 2 days ago - after close to 10 years. My website was fairly dormant and was only revived about 3 months ago. When traffic picked up (about 1,500 hits in February), I got mails, that my site would get "negatively impacted" (meaning throttling the speed making the site more or less useless) and they even threatened service disruption bullying me into one of those VPS plans to the tune of $ 600 / year. I was also to adjust the default WordPress installation cron jobs - this would be a major issue. Funny, I installed Wordpress from their cPanel. The last sentence in the mail: "My system administrator has scheduled the next audit on your account to be done after March 6. Kindly take all measures possible before the date in question to avoid any service disruption." So ordered a € 9 package from Strato in Germany, VPS 16GB 300GB SSD, unlimited Traffic. Registered gonefilming.de (as opposed to HostPapa's gonefilming.com domain), downloaded the site and DBs. Had the other site up and running within 3 hours. Important sidenote: A "package" from HostPapa may include free SSL, domain, etc. The domain registered belongs to Tucows, a registrar in Canada. You own nothing. I am now trying to get ownership. Be aware of this important little fact, because they have you over a barrel on that one.
For the entire experience, see the post on my site:
https://gonefilming.de/ca/2020/03/04/tschuess-hostpapa/

Adam

1 — 

Waste of Money and Especially time

The company might be registered in Canada but the support-staff is all overseas and rarely speaks more than rudimentary english... This made communicating with their support staff difficult.

In the 4 years I was hosted by host-papa they disappointed me at every turn. Turning the first two years there were frequent service interruptions. In the later two years the service interruptions subsided but the support staff was not knowledgeable & was not able to communicate well.

When an increase to their hosting fees was requiring an increase, they emailed me about it in a really roundabout way that was difficult to understand and make sense of. I honestly thought it was an overseas scam of some kind. In the end I wound up reducing my current term by a couple months to accommodate the pricing increase... But I really would have felt better if they'd laid out all the options in a professional manner, rather than causing me to figure it out for them.

I'll be getting off their servers asap. Don't waste your money on these jokers. I've attached a screenshot of the email they sent me to notify me of a pricing increase... I don't ask for much, but I think that clearly written correspondence would be a big plus for the hostpapa team.

I came to hostpapa about 4 years ago & signed up for their reseller program. I've been a full-time web-developer & server-admin for 10+ years now & thought i could provide my clients cheaper, more reliable hosting by hosting them myself.

Deb

1 — 

Worst hosting ever

I signed up for 2 years with this company. At the halfway mark they sent an email threatening to suspend my sites, because of excess CPU usage. I own 2 very small content blogs. One gets approx 80 visits a month, the other 200. It's just not possible for CPU resources to be over used. I asked for help as I have no experience in this area. They sent an email with print screen pictures on how to fix the issue. They may as well have sent pics on how to fly to the moon. NOT HELPFUL. I finally got to speak to someone who was pleasant but the only option other than fixing it myself was to upgrade the account. It took a week of calling before he responded and then mentioned, interestingly, that he had been busy with a big account they had just won.

So there it was!! I'm just a little fish and they aren't interested unless I upgrade. It's all about the money for them.

So. NEVER GO WITH THIS COMPANY. I notice there are some 5 star reviews. I would suggest, if they are indeed genuine reviews, that these are from bigger fish than I, and therefore worthy of their time.

Finally. They've capped my CPU usage. That's their idea of fixing the problem. So, I'm in the process now of moving my sites to another hosting service.

I only give them 1 star because you have to fill in something. Otherwise they'd get NO stars from me.

Jonathan

1 — 

Bad experience

Last year around the same time we had a bump in traffic, and the first thing that happened was a notice I was in violation and I needed to upgrade to a commercial package. A year later I again had a bump in traffic 32,527 visits in one week. Holy smokes they never said anywhere how few visitors you're allowed before you are in violation. Here again a year later they want a non profit website (a simple blog) to pay a commercial rate, it's beyond credulous. I am not sure I will stay for the remainder of the contract, their advertisement of unlimited bandwidth is an outright lie. As soon as you have a little, they claim you violated their resources meter. How ridiculous to claim unlimited bandwidth as long as it does not use more resources! For me they have proven they are scammers.

Douglas A

1 — 

Poor Customer Support

I was with Lunarpages and unfortunately was merged/bought by HostPapa. So I called support yesterday and there was no answer. So I called today and after a lengthy hold was connected to someone in South America. I asked them for a simple server process which in the past took 5 minutes with Lunar pages. All the while trying to talk to him a dog was barking next to him. He said that this was too complicated for him and that I would need to fill out a ticket. Lunarpages had a support ticket system. Unfortunately HostPapa does not. He said I could email them and they would get back to me tomorrow! I called in four times! Each time I asked to speak to someone at their corporate and they refused. When you go to their front page it says:

Award winning support

Our PapaSquad’s in-house experts provide you with the support you need, when you need it.

I was with 1 and 1 who was just as bad.

The reason I was with LunarPages for so long was their incredible customer service in California. So sad to see them go.
Now I have to find someone else that has customer service ;(

Mezza

5 — 

Great, so far

I am very happy so far. Customer service via chat has been almost instant & the few issues I had resolved either on the spot or the next day. Polar opposite to what I experienced prior to switching hosts. I also found the knowledge base very helpful & I like the interface - it is more user friendly. I’m surprised at the vitriol of some of the reviewers here. Some of them lack forethought. I would never rely solely on a single source to back up my website. Especially if it’s a business. That’s just dumb. All that hard work could be gone in an instant. Back it up externally in case something dire happens, people! And take some responsibility for knowing when your domain renewals are due - try keeping your own records & reminders.

Halley W

1 — 

Awful. Didn’t want them - leaving as soon as I can

I have six domains that got caught up from a buyout by a smaller web hosting company I had been with for 15+ years. I loved them. Had no issues. They were helpful and curious, I could call or email any day or weekend and get superb service. Three months into HostPapa and none of my websites work right, I have limited access and it’s cumbersome to use the Wordpress dashboard; more than 50% of the time it times out when I click on a link and I have to go back and try the link again. When I try to engage with tech support it’s hit and miss. And social media is belittling and even to the point of bullying.

RUN AWAY!

Mark J

2 — 

Slow Loading.Dead slow ahead!

Hostpapa recently acquired LunarPages, immediately after my web galleries began crashing. Had to change out the templates, cause something in the change over completely screwed up my original template. Well after some trial and error the problems were pretty much pointing to speed issues, finally trimmed a very basic template down to be able to at least load, but still loads the thumbnails so slow the pages do not fully load all thumbnails. Going to the single image display from the thumbnail, go get a cup of coffee, you'll have time before the image fully loads if it does at all.

Never had any such problems when LunarPages was still the host provider! My albums are set up on Piwigo... you know Pee-wee-go, is known for being a huge bandwidth hog... NOT! Not happy at all with Hostpapa, being able to post, share, and make available my AstroPhoto images with other amateur astronomers, classrooms, and such is one of the primary reasons the site exists. So yea, hostpapa's bandwidth/speeds would seem to really suck to the point of not being able to display some of your data.

Baha H

5 — 

Great hosting organization

I switched to HostPapa after 15 years with one of the largest web hosting organizations. I AM VERY, VERY GLAD I DID.

The service quality exceeded my expectations. The competence and communication quality of the support team is exceptional. The cost is 500% less than what I paid my previous provider. My only regret is that I did not switch sooner. I would wholeheartedly recommend HostPapa. I have already done so.

Paula

1 — 

They attempt to charge extra to those who don't check

We used to be with SmartyHost, who sold to NetRegistry, who are absolutely hopeless, so we switched about 50 domain names to HostPapa as they seemed ok for a bit. But on renewal, we were overcharged so much, and we had no idea until we were years in.

Each and every time they sent us an invoice, we noticed that it was at least double what they should charge.

They also told us that we should switch to their VPS hosting service as we got too much traffic.....we're not only based in Australia, but we have only a third of the traffic we've had in recent years, so I have no idea how they come up with this.

So after they promised we would not have any downtime and we won't lose any content on our sites etc, we switched to their more expensive VPS hosting.
1. they tried to charge us an extra $200 more than quoted, but we caught them out on this;
2. we lost a complete website including years and years of content that our customers had PAID to be featured on, and they did not back it up, so it's gone for good;
3. now we've had to build a new website from scratch, and we cannot receive emails to get the authentication emails for the new site due to the VPS swapover, so we cannot even access the new site, as we cannot get the emails for it. I am trying to change to a dummy email until hostpapa fix this.

In addition, we've lost domains with Hostpapa as they do not keep you informed well of the renewal dates. This really pissed me off as domain names are valuable and can be your entire life if you run a business with it. Luckily, this one was not all important, but I wanted to keep it as I had plans for it in the future. Now someone else has it and I still use the same username in some places, and now that they have my domain, they might trademark it and stop me using the name in certain places, especially where I might have gotten a good reputation while using it (ie: ebay etc).

We'll be changing to a new registrar asap and I just wanted to mention all this here so are well informed by an actual customer.

Mac B

3 — 

Load times have stymied us

We've been happy with all aspects of Hostpapa to date - tools, support, storage, etc. but we now have a need for a 3rd party to harvest data from our system. Using a small subset of 1200 records, it constantly falls over with a 503 TimeOut error as the server shuts out the harvester. Since our full set of records numbers 110,000, we upgraded the plan to Business, had the harvesters URL whitelisted and got a few other tweaks but the performance is still woeful. We're now headed to the Business Pro account in the hope that delivers - a huge jump in pricing.

C W

4 — 

Things I have learned

HostPapa in my experience has proved to have been a reliable and competitive priced Hosting Company. They provide a wealth of facilities that I have never needed but should I have they were there. On the few occasions I have needed the backup teams either through submitting a help request or via the live help desk the techs have been both knowledgeable and friendly. I have used both the US and UK arms of the company and have been well served by both of them. Being a Canadian green eco company has also been a bonus. Fear not about renewal prices everything is negotiable. Well satisfied.

Barbi

4 — 

Slow but otherwise happy

I've had a reseller account on HostPapa for a little over a year. Yes, the load times tend to be slow, but as most of my clients are small businesses with light-weight websites, it hasn't impacted my business. I was a bit surprised by all the negative reviews regarding the customer service, which I have always found to be excellent. I use the chat function and always have someone solve my problem within moments. I've never had anyone try to upsell services and never have been charged for something I didn't expect. I've been quite happy with my experience with HostPapa.

javier p

5 — 

very happy with my service

I can't be happier with HP. I'm in the process of setting up a couple of web apps on their servers and they've been very responsive and helpful when I have needed help. the price is fair and the service so far appears to be reliable.

Donald S

4 — 

Mixed experience

Interesting to read the reviews here and see the dramatic change that started toward the end of 2018. Things have been pretty solid for me for over 20 years, and I won't be changing. But I do think there is a disconnect between billing and the rest of the company. I get notices of bills coming due, such as a domain renew, long after I have closed that domain. If you are on automatic renewal, you had better cancel the domain several weeks before it comes due, or they will take the payment and then comes lots of back and forth to get a refund. It does not happen often, but it can be annoying.

But I do like their videos for how to do things, and the many add-on apps that can be helpful. As a teacher, I give it a B+.

Atmos A

1 — 

Don't waste your time or money, false billing warning

If it looks too good to be true it is! Don't waste your time or money because HostPapa will waste it for you. The hosting package was not what I thought it was and I was wrongfully billed for other services and products, stay on top of your billing with them. The customer service agents are polite but I feel so sorry for them because their hands are tied up in endless tickets that lead you to more tickets that take forever to be answered and resolved if they don't mess up! No pros only cons lol. STAY AWAY FROM HOSTPAPA

Roman

5 — 

Customer Service

I have been with Hostpapa for a while now but have had very little contact with support. Website under construction. I had a web developer engaged. You would think they would be a capable professional. Well, to cut a story short my website became infected with malware malicious code. On asking HostPapa support regarding my problem they presented me with answers and solutions very quickly. Great service and support. I am now back on track with constructing my website... with a new developer.. fingers crossed.. haha

Thank you again Hostpapa for your excellent support and response with my issue

Richard C

5 — 

More Than A Decade Of Great Service

I've been a Host Papa Customer since late 2008 and my experience has been excellent! Any time I've had a question or concern, technical or otherwise, the customer service and support team have been excellent. I would recommend HostPapa to anyone in need of their services. A+

bri

1 — 

Will kill your websites on a whim

Have been with hostpapa for over 10 years... started with them because of unlimited websites, blah blah,,,Then one day about 2 years ago, all websites (about 10 of them) were killed - because one mail account had reached a new limit they just decided on.... Might not have minded if they warned me by any method... but no... simply killed them all. Spent an evening moving my most important websites to a new host because initially they wouldn't get back to me, and this actually resulted in me being so stressed I had to get checked out next day in hospital because of chest pains. I intended to move my remaining sites a.s.a.p. - but pressures of this and that stopped me. Anyway.. I was reminded again today when they killed all my subdomains becuase they invented a new limit on the number of files i'm allowed and told me by killing my sites.... these guys are low life scum who have no regard for you or your website or the business that it supports...

Kom

1 — 

Very poor services

I've received a notification that my website is being negatively impacted the shared website and It need to be resolved by 03/06/2019. However HostPapa did not identify what is causing this issue. I did check my website and hosting dashboard but couldn't find any issue. After that I used email and livechat to find out more details but tech guy couldn't answer what is the issue as he didn't see from his side. I requested whether the ticket should be closed or deadline extension as they need more time to scan my website. The answer was they can only put a request and this will be taken care by the management. So I asked for a management phone number but apparently it was a tech support call centre. I re-provided the issue and the said my account was already been suspended by that issue. How come today was 25/05/2019 and he also couldn't provide what was being issued. Again what he could do was a some requests and make my website goes live again. He said the auto system made that but I paid for the hosting service without a good service and support. This was very unprofessional and very poor service ever. I wouldn't recommend anyone to use HostPapa at all. I will definitely find another supplier.

B

1 — 

Offer Cheap, Threaten Suspension, Upsell, Rince, Repeat

After having used them for a few years, they weren't great but they weren't bad. Last year they pulled a stunt pushing for an upsell to a VPS for a couple of sites that has very little traffic. Probably along the lines of other reviews here that have complained about the same. After overcoming this hurdle and making it very clear that the so called 'tech support' was simply pushing an upsell, we overcome this hurdle with great frustration.

It seems it's time to revenue raise again or someone in tech support is trying to earn their commissions and another suspension threat has been raised. Great to raise suspension threats but respond very slowly with little effort to help resolve. Apologies, there was effort, in providing a proposal to upgrade to either a VPS or a premium business site this time.

Other providers have been so much better, especially with customer service and support and response times.

Steve

1 — 

Stay away

I signed up several years ago and specifically asked how much email data can I store. I was told unlimited. Last week my website was shut down and I was told that if I want to store more than 500 MB per email address, I could purchase a package. They said it wasn't fair to other users o the same server. Funny, but if I pay over $200.00/year extra all of a sudden its fair? just a cash grab. This company claims to be cheap, but they will screw you later.

Swapnil A

1 — 

Never Buy

This service provider is cheap in price as well as cheap in quality. I need to chat with customer care 4-5 times in a week for telling them my site is not live. I frustrate with this hosting, sadly buy for 3 years.

Dave

1 — 

False promises

I was with a host called Site5 last year when I received an email from Derek at Hostpapa stating that Site5 was acquired, their service would change for the worse, and a majority of the original server health and servicing teams had onboarded with Hostpapa. I was extremely fond of the servicing from my previous host, so I started asking questions about the service. They even had Jamie (the CEO of Hostpapa) court me as a lead. I was concerned over the server's physical location and latency, but was assured by Jamie that "we are opening up DC's in the USA this year (probably match your timing)."

I took the bait and migrated over a vanilla Wordpress blog to start and my page load time had gone from an average of 3-4 seconds to 12-13 seconds - even with site caching. I waited a little bit longer for that US-based server. It never came. When I asked about it again I was met with radio silence. They refused to look at resource usage across the shared environment. When I submitted a support ticket about site speed they sent me to the knowledge base and closed the ticket. When I asked to be refunded a prorated amount for hosting, I was denied. I had only used 6 weeks out of my 52 week purchase, and even a partial prorated refund would have been satisfactory. They refused to work with me. They basically stole my money with yes-sirs and false promises and delivered a level of service that was far below expectations.

Based on my experience, my opinion is that Hostpapa provided a minimum viable product marketed as a top tier solution. If server location, resource balancing, and page load time is absolutely something you're concerned about, consider taking your business to another hosting company.

Toddy

1 — 

Avoid like plague

If you fancy a server that take 5 minute just to install a plugin, or if enjoy inaccessible cPanel that you gotta contact them to reset your password everyday, perhaps you love to see stale cached pages from your website ... Yes, this is the right host.

Oh I forgot, another unique feature of this is the only host you can never add a domain not until and after the DNS is completely pointed to them. Same thing with FTP. Ever heard of a host that you can;t even do SFTP? I have no clue why so except I do know they don't like you to hang around their backend.

Bill S

1 — 

refund stinks

Bought into the sales B.S. Afr a couple of days it was too much for my needs so contaced to get refund.

Original bill was 91.97 including tax

The line items were "web hosting business" 71.40 ( 5.95 / month) Domain registration 0.00 Domain Privacy ( which your are forced to take) 9.99.

Final refund was 64.87 hardly a full refund. I say Stay away. If they cannot provide a full refund then how can you expect them to provide the service they advertise.

Frank

2 — 

Stay away, desperate in upselling

I'm currently hosting five small sites with Hostpapa under a shared server plan. The amount of traffic my five websites are getting per day is minuscule, each has somewhere between 20 - 50 visits per day only.

Just like the well known GoDaddy practice they now force me to buy a VPS package by claiming that my small sites use up too much resources. This is not justifiable, it's just desperate and unprofessional.

If they can't even host small, low traffic sites without constantly 'breaking' then there is no point staying with Hostpapa. I will leave after my hosting plan finishes.

Frank

Andrew G

1 — 

Absolute Nightmare

Nightmare from start to finish... They were tasked with the transfer of my website from Inmotion hosting... They screwed it up majorly... In the end, I was asked to go back to Inmotion and ask them if they still had my back up and if I get get a copy... (I think they were just too embarrassed to ask for themselves)

When eventually they got it up and running after 7 days my Google ranking had been affected...

Now with Hostpapa, you are responsible for the management of doing your own backups for your site. I explained that I wasn't happy doing this and could they do it. They agreed...

Three months later my site started having issues, I started getting between 5 and 20 Pingdom alerts every day, when I told them about this they just degraded Pingdom and being a joke website. Then a button stopped working, then a page wouldn't load, then another button stopped working, kept doing the repairs but then they started to escalate until eventually, the website crashed...

So I contacted support and asked them to clean it out and run the backup...

THEY HADN'T SET THE BACK UP TO RUN... AND THE FILES THAT THEY GOT FROM INMOTION THEY NO LONGER HAD. SO I HAD NO BACK UP FOR MY SITE (OVER 3,000 PAGES GONE).

Now to make things worse they asked me to ask Inmotion Hosting if they still had my file...

Then about 2 weeks after they lost my site I get this email...

The HostPapa System Administrators have flagged your account for overuse of shared hosting resources.

My name is Oscar, and I am currently your account manager. My job is to resolve the current issue, so that your website +hosting services are active, and optimized.

Your shared hosting account has reached and/or breached its plan resource server limits. It is very likely that you have too many visitors, activities, background processes, or a combination of these factors. Server CPU usage, memory, and disc space are being impacted and, higher than normal resources have been allocated for your shared hosting space.

Currently, 335.000 hits on ourk9.com, in July, were impacting other accounts, because of the constant overuse of shared resources to keep your services active. HostPapa is fair to all clients that are on shared servers and we can’t allow this to continue.

To avoid any service disruptions, I highly recommend you reply to this email in order to find and implement a speedy solution to this matter.

Yea they got a reply...

The plan I was their WP Business Pro Plan $215.40 per year...

Compensation for them destroying my business... A refund of $149.12 of unused hosting...

HOSTPAPA ARE THE WORST OF THE WORST AND I HAVE BEEN USING HOSTING NOW FOR MORE THAN 23 YEARS... THEY ARE WITHOUT DOUBT THE MOST INCOMPETENT HOSTING COMPANY OUT THERE...

Ella D

5 — 

Reliable service

I joined HostPapa over 10 years ago. I paid someone else to do my website and she decided to host it with HostPapa. I also have my domain with them. I eventually started to update my website myself with no prior experience and with help of my friend. Not knowing anything about it, I heavily relied on HostPapa's support. I was not disappointed. Their customer support was always great. So very helpful!!! I just finished my own website I created with WIX and I needed to point my domain to them. HostPapa just did it for me. I misunderstood and cancelled my webhosting with HostPapa having still 2 years left. A service representative from HostPapa pointed it out to me and gave me better options. He cancelled my cancellation and fixed my problem within 24 hrs. I would recommend HostPapa, especially if you have limited knowledge about website hosting. And when you have limited knowledge, that's when customer service is like gold!

Ryan

5 — 

Great service for a simple site

I run a simple website that contains just HTML pages. As such, it delivers the pages and assets quite quickly. However, when I was using WordPress, I didn't notice any issues.

Their support is fantastic! I can always depend on them to help me find an answer.

Regards,
Ryan

Daniel O

1 — 

Rubbish Customer Services

Back in 2008 I took out a HostPapa plan where everything was pefect.
However, since 2015, I’ve had nothing but trouble.
Poor server response times and severe lag. With technical support taking days to fix, sometimes taking even 24 hours just to respond to the ticket.

Despite moving my services to a newer server (twice), we still suffered severe outages or web site lag.

This has greatly impacted our Google ranking, and without doubt lost us customers.
In my opinion shared servers are over populated.

So I took it upon myself to raise a complaint with HostPapa, asking how they expect I run a small business with such frequent outages and downtime.

What do I recieve for my complaint?
HostPapa terminating my contract.

I’m absolutely appauled and discusted.
It seems HostPapa’s way of keeping customer satisfaction high, is to terminate the contracts of those who have the audacity to complain.

Please read for yourself.

We want our customers to be happy at HostPapa, unfortunately following a review of your feedback regarding HostPapa and the services we provide it is clear that you have not been happy with us. As this is not a healthy business relationship we have taken the decision to end the relationship at this time and we are now providing you with 30 days notice.

Absolutely appauling customer services.

Aaron

5 — 

Host Papa's Support Team Is The Cat's Pyjamas

I have been hosting multiple websites with Hostpapa for quite a few years and I have had nothing but positive experiences with their team. It can be so stressful for a casual web developer just starting out and the Hostpapa team have been so supportive of every question I’ve had or problem I have experienced. Keep up the great work!

Carrie

5 — 

6 years of great service

I have both a personal and a business site with HostPapa. I find their services to be of good value, and their support is great. I have had quick responses on the phone and through the site chat the few times I had questions. I would certainly recommend HostPapa to my friends and colleagues.

Daniela

5 — 

Do what they say = write!

My first impulse was when what was promoted clearly was actually the deal, with no costs or ridiculous conditions to obtain the price displayed. I am saying it because all other main providers did just that. And on top of that the cost is very good. I must add that customer service is swift, knowledgable and full of solutions. Also their automatic communication is just complete, that leaves you with no guesswork. This is important to me as I am not experienced with all of this, when even transferring my hosting for for the first time :-/
I can only highly recommend HostPapa as a provider for all you small and big websites and mails.

Rob

5 — 

10 Year Satisfied Customer

I started with Hostpapa in 2007 after some bad experiences elsewhere. Mostly I develop web applications in PHP and MySQL. Hostpapa has been improving steadily over the years. If I have performance problems, one “call” to the chat guy and they fix it. Same with technical problems, one online chat and it’s fixed in minutes. Cpanel is getting better and better, Hostpapa gives me enough access to ini files to configure what I need. If I need more than 50 emails per day, they consider and usually grant my request. The account interface is intuitive and billing/payment is simple. I recommend Hostpapa to ANYONE.

John T

5 — 

Quite content

I chose Host Papa on the recommendation of a colleague when I was looking for someone to host my blog. That was a year ago and I have been completely happy with their service, their assistance and their people. I have contacted them a few time for support and they have been very good. Recently I contacted them as I was getting an error message that no one seemed to understand or correct. This firm did and took care of the problem and maintained contact with me to ensure that the correction worked and that I was problem free.
I have been very happy with them.

Ed B

5 — 

Excellent Support

HostPapa was recommended to me by one of our developers. I decided to build some websites myself, partly as a DIY experiment, but more so as an education process so that, to a degree, I have a better handle on what our developers deal with.

As I came across various newbie development issues the HostPapa support people and the online chat people were not only very helpful, they were quite patient. So much so, a few of the HostPapa support people were so kind as to provide me with a tutorial/explanation or a link that provided me info.

Also now that I know a few more things I can say the overall service and hosting has been very good.

So if asked today I would highly recommend HostPapa.

David

5 — 

Good quality service!

I’ve used Hostpapa for four years now, and recommend them to any of my clients who require hosting. The hosting provided by Hostpapa has consistent and reliable uptime, good speed and good stability.

One standout feature of Hostpapas service is their 24/7 support, which I’ve found very useful for helping to resolve and answer technical questions and issues that arise from time to time. Previous hosting providers left my sites open to hackers (which did occur) and did not deliver anywhere near the levels of support that Hostpapa does.

Gloria N

3 — 

Great Support

I was only with Host Papa for a year for a new domain I was meaning to develop. As it turned out, I launched a simple site but never made the time to grow it into a viable project, so I chose to cancel my hosting since I wasn’t going to use that web page anymore. For the time I was with HostPapa I found them to be helpful with clear and understandable support. I was not treated as a doddering old fool. They had patience with my questions. Also when I was late in cancelling, they did not charge me extra as they could have which for a business these days is outstanding customer service. I recommend them for excellent hosting and customer care.

Bronte

4 — 

Overall: Long-Term, Satisfied Customer

I’ve been with HostPapa for about 5 years. My personal website is a portfolio, so it is nothing content-heavy – just a paragraph of text and a minimalistic gallery. For this, HostPapa has been excellent. I never experience any downtime & speed is lightning fast.

For another website I run, which is a much heavier site with WordPress and WooCommerce installed, I am experiencing issues. This is on a separate shared hosting plan, and this site is facing a TON of downtime... Almost every day the site has some sort of connection error. This site gets a lot more traffic and I am told that this is just “one of the risks of shared hosting”, and that I should upgrade to VPS to solve all my problems (almost a $300 difference annually). I’m still going back and forth with them to see what my options are.

I will say, however, I always have a pleasant experience with HostPapa’s support team. They always respond almost instantly, and are happy to go through any issues I have until the problem is solved. I am considering upgrading that second website to see if it makes a difference, but if it doesn’t, I will need to go somewhere else for hosting.

I don’t want to leave HostPapa because for my personal site I’ve had nothing but positive experiences, it is only in the past month or so where I’ve been experiencing issues with that second site, but obviously I need a website that is up at all times.

Atilla

2 — 

Good set of tools but horribly fluctuating load times

Initially I was pleased with the set of tools available on Hostpapa and their support also seemed responsive. Was able to build a website fairly quickly and at good quality however the rest of the story is less positive.

The load times of the site fluctuate at incredible rates. Sometimes the site loads under 1 second (5-10% of times), then goes up to 3 seconds (40% of times), it loads above 3 seconds (45% of times) and reaches 5-10-15 second load times easily. Finally about 4-5% of times the site times out. The site is quite small in size – about 4 pages and 1.5 mb in size.

Problem isn’t solved yet, not even after providing them proof and monitoring the site for weeks.

This means visitors have a terrible experience therefore I must consider changing host!

Too bad! Initially I liked their tooling and their support.

Tania H

1 — 

Absolute Thieves

I was with Hostpapa for 12 months. During that time my site was hacked into numerous times. The response from support was usually that I should consider upgrading. I was testing the company for the 12 month period to see if they were suitable at the level at which I had purchased, had I been happy I would have upgraded. The company often didn’t know when the site had been hacked and was offline. They would make silly statements such as ‘the fault is with your browser, other people can see your site’ which wasn’t true, ‘other people’ had contacted me already to say the site was down along with all my other sites.
The worst was yet to come. I purchased hosting elsewhere and began to move my domains and sites away. I moved only two before suddenly I could not get access to my domains or sites. Hostpapa held my domain names captive and refused to let me have them!!! They kept the domains for at least 6 weeks then charged my account for services I didn’t want! I ended up getting some more domains and just left the others which host papa are now trying to charge me for!!! They blocked my emails and ‘support’ would simply lie to me. They have no phone connected in their “Sydney” office (and I have to wonder if it actually exists at all.)
The worst hosting ever! Never ever go near them. They may appear reasonable for a while but if you refuse to pay for more ‘services’ or criticize their poor service you will pay a hefty price. Google ‘host papa won’t give me my domains’ or ‘hostpapa wrongfully debit my account’ and similar searches… which reveal their illegal practices.
If a lawyer happens to read this I would love to take legal action against these thieves.

Samantha

5 — 

Outstanding support

I have been with Host Papa for just over a year. I had issues with my website including malware which they helped me remove and offered me a service for protection from this happening again. The server speed is fast and the support are very friendly. I highly recommend Host Papa.

kv

1 — 

Cheating webhost

First year they gave the website with minimum cost. Next year without your permission debit the money from your account. Be careful. Cheating Fellows.

Dragos

5 — 

I'm pleased...

When I first found HostPapa I couldn’t believe I was getting everything my old host offered for a fraction of the price, and figured there had to be a catch. So far I can say the only downsides I have found are that FTP access is a little slow and there have been maybe 2 or 3 instances I’ve noticed in the first year that my sites were briefly inaccessible (which happened on my old host anyway). This hasn’t happened for a few months, however.

On the upside, there is the price, the great customer service, and the fact I have everything I need at my fingertips to host several small sites for my friends’ businesses & take care of their emails. Overall, very pleased.

Andressen

3 — 

April 19, 2016

I bought HostPapa cheapest plan in 2013 – it cost less than $2 at that time. It seems like they’ve raised their prices.

I’ve been using them for smaller projects, thus I haven’t really kept an eye on the uptime/speed. However, for me it seems like it’s on the slower side as I can’t complain much about my internet connection.

Another con is that their renewal fees can be higher (around $4/month if I remember correctly).

Overall they aren’t a bad host. Support is quite helpful and it’s perfect for test/smaller sites.