WebHostingPad Review

One of the Lowest Uptime We've yet to Seen. Here's Why

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

WebHostingPad hosting review

WebHostingPad is cheap.

Like under two bucks cheap.

Founded in 2005 by a small group of individuals, it has grown steadily now for over a decade on the back of low prices.

But is that… ALL they’re good for?!

To find out, we purchased a WebHostingPad “Power Plan” back in June 2015, setting up a basic WordPress website

Over the past few months, we’ve been closely watching their performance statistics like uptime & speed, in addition to doing our own background analysis to find out if WebHostingPad is a steal at their low prices, or a train wreck waiting to happen.

Read our full unbiased review below to find out which is true.

Pros of Using WebHostingPad

WebHostingPad has a few things going for it besides a low price. Starting with…

1. Decent Customer Support

Our own personal experience with WebHostingPad was pretty good.

Their support staff connected instantly, and they got back to us within about a minute after each question.

Not the best experience we’ve had among all we reviewed, but pretty good nonetheless.

WebHostingPad support

As with most web hosts, however, there are very mixed reviews about WebHostingPad’s customer service response.

  1. “My email to an address at verizon.net continues to bounce. I’ve filled out two support tickets, but no response. Why can’t I get this resolved?”
  2. “Hi, can you please let us know what time the live technical support works please – as we tried it when the system said it was online – but then it decided you were offline after all – and told us to send an email message which has not yet been answered. Many thanks”
  3. “Hi, I’ve had issues with my website going down but your support team tells me that it’s fine and there are no problems. I’m really not getting the help I think I should be and I’m definitely an unhappy customer. Can someone help me please and show me that you do care about your customers?”
  4. “My website is down and I cannot reach anyone in customer service. On the phone, it says to leave a message but then says “sorry but the user mailbox is full”. It also suggests using live chat but when I do that it disconnects me and says no online agents are available. So, I’ve emailed a ticket. I’m just wondering what’s going on and I’d like to resolve this promptly. Thanks.”

2. Unbelievably Cheap

WebHostingPad does have one great thing going for it.

WebHostingPad pricing breakdown

They’re cheap.

With the exception of iPage‘s not-so-secret, slimmed-down Essential plan, it’s among the cheapest options available to you.

Chances are, there’s a reason it’s so cheap (which you’ll find out below under the ‘cons’ list). But if the price is your only concern, look no further.

3. Strong Money-Back Guarantee

WebHostingPad has a rock-solid, 30-day money-back guarantee if you don’t find their services reliable. However, the money-back guarantee covers hosting purchases only. This guarantee does not apply to renewals, addons, site transfer fees, service charges, or domain name registrations or renewals, including free domain registrations as part of WebHostingPad’s FREE DOMAIN coupon offer

4. Security Enhancements

Typically, the cheapest options available are also limited when it comes to the ‘extra’ stuff like security options. Fortunately, WebHostingPad isn’t, throwing in Automated Malware Scanner and Malware Quarantine for their WordPress hosting plans.

Cons of Using WebHostingPad

Cheap companies are cheap for a reason. Chances are, they’re not willing (or able) to turn that slim profit margin into reinvesting back into their products and services.

WebHostingPad is no different, offering mediocre-to-bad service where it counts. Take a look.

1. Very LOW Uptime of 99.23% (Last 24-Month Average)

A website is only good to you when it’s up, online for visitors or potential customers to use.

Similarly, a web host’s primary job is to ensure that happens. Here, WebHostingPad struggles.

Despite their website’s bold claims of 99% uptime, they didn’t come anywhere close.

Instead, they delivered a below-average uptime of 99.23% over the last 24-months – this is one of the lowest we’ve seen after reviewing over thirty other web hosts.

In fact, while trying to write an earlier version of this review, the test site was offline again.

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • January 2020 average uptime: 99.89%
  • December 2019 average uptime: 99.85%
  • November 2019 average uptime: 99.78%
  • October 2019 average uptime: 99.87%
  • September 2019 average uptime: 99.85%
  • August 2019 average uptime: 99.81%
  • July 2019 average uptime: 99.83%
  • June 2019 average uptime: 99.77%
  • May 2019 average uptime: 99.81%
  • April 2019 average uptime: 99.89%
  • March 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
  • February 2019 average uptime: 99.92%

Take a look at this graph below (It’s all red):

WebHostingPad last 24-month statistics
WebHostingPad average uptime | See stats

2. Slow Page Loading Time

The next job of a web host is to make sure your website is delivered in a timely manner to said visitors or potential customers.

Beyond annoying people, because pages are taking too long to load, site speed can also affect search engine rankings and even conversions.

WebHostingPad struggles again in this department, posting a page loading time of 1,021ms over the past 24 months. That means that it takes more than 1 second to load a web page – which is a no-go in today’s Internet world.

Last 12-month average load time:

WebHostingPad last 16-month detailed statistics
WebHostingPad average speed 2019-2020 | See stats

3. Strings-Attached ‘Free’ Domain Registration

WebHostingPad will throw in a free domain name to new account signups, similar to other web hosts.

However, there are a few caveats.

First, you need to sign up with the “FREE DOMAIN” coupon to enjoy this free domain name offer.

Second, any other coupon invalidates this.

Third, you will have to pay $14.95 annually to renew your domain name. Typically you can buy domain names for less than $10 these days on other websites.

So this ‘additional’ future cost probably won’t pay for itself in a few year’s time.

4. Very Restrictive Website Transfers

Like other web hosts, WebHostingPad will also help you transfer an existing site over to their services for free.

ONLY if however, it’s less than 2GB (which is tiny). That’s the maximum size of an account eligible for free transfers, and it will NOT include email addresses, FTP accounts, subdomains or addon domains. Instead, you’d have to recreate those within their control panel.

5. Very Restrictive Backup Option.

‘Free backups’ are yet another offer that some other web hosts will throw in for new customers.

On the face of it, they sound like an amazing deal to help you backstop your site for any problems or issues.

But check out what we found in the fine print buried in their Terms of Service:

“WebHostingPad, at our sole discretion, will take weekly backups of customer’s accounts, up to and including 1GB of website files only. This backup does not include email addresses, email accounts, databases, or anything other than website files. Any account that is larger than 1GB will not be included in any automated backup service provided by WebHostingPad. In the event that a customer requires a backup to be restored, WebHostingPad may charge a one-time backup restoration service fee of $39.95.”

Here’s a quick translation of that legal gibberish:

  • They will only take backups at their “sole discretion” – whatever that means?!
  • Your backup cannot exceed 1GB (which again, is tiny)
  • They only back up website files. This does NOT include emails or even databases
  • They may charge a restoration fee of $39.95 to restore your backup (so… it ain’t free?!)
  • The option to manually backup via cPanel is not available. You need to pay them to have this enabled.

In short, this backup offer is not good. AND they’re restricting your ability to run simple manual backups on top of it.

WebHostingPad Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

WebHostingPad has two shared hosting plans:

Power Plan Hosting Power Plan Plus
Pricing $1.99/month $2.99/month
Websites Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered
Storage Unmetered Unmetered
Email Accounts Unlimited Unlimited
Other Features – • Free Trusted SSL Encryption
• Free 1-Click WordPress
• Automated and Anytime Backups

They also have WordPress hosting options, but we don’t think they would be any better than the regular shared hosting. Though, all WordPress hosting plans come with unlimited storage and unlimited email accounts.

Quick Facts

  • Free Domain: Yes.
  • Ease of Signup: Very easy, one-page sign-up process.
  • Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal, Alipay, Bitcoin, Check, Money Order, Western Union.
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: They may charge a $39.95 fee to restore your backups. Users should not exceed 150,000 total files.  If you reach the file limit, you can purchase an additional block of 150,000 files for $10 per month. If they notify you about reaching the file limit and you do not respond, they will automatically bill you $10 per month per extra 150,000 files. You are not allowed to use more than 10 percent CPU and memory, and your sessions must not exceed 10 minutes. There’s a limit of 300 emails per hour or 3,000 emails per day.
  • Upsells: Lots of upsells.
  • Account Activation: Quick activation.
  • Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Quick and easy installation of popular apps and CMSs with Softaculous.

Do We Recommend WebHostingPad?

No way. Please avoid.

Their customer support is decent, but their uptime and page loading times are completely unsatisfactory.

Then when you consider how restrictive their Terms of Service and limits are, it’s really a no-brainer.

Even despite their absurdly low introductory rate, you’re better off looking for MUCH better alternatives out there like Hostinger or iPage (both under $2).

P.S. If you want to see hosting providers that ranked above WebHostingPad, check our best performing hosts here.

Any experience with Web Hosting Pad? If so, please leave a review below! We accept all honest and transparent reviews, no matter whether they’re good or bad.

Submit a review

Submit a short but detailed review and help others!

[contact-form-7 id="415" title="Submit Review Single"]

We only accept user-reviews that give value to our visitors. Not all reviews will be published. If you wish your review to be approved, we recommend you to write valid, unique and helpful reviews – either positive or negative. Thanks for your support!

Important: Web host companies cannot pay to delete or change the reviews. But we provide them an opportunity to answer or comment on any review, to keep the process honest and fair for both sides.

18 user reviews for WebHostingPad

greg

1 — 

avoid this hosting company!

Truly avoid doing business with this company. They do not keep their commitment to service, They will shut down your hosting under false pretenses and try to force you to upgrade their service plan, or block traffic from countries other than the usa. I'm not joking.

If you want to have a website that works, and can be seen outside of the usa. Look for another provider, as this is the worst company I've ever dealt with.

dan f

1 — 

AVOID THEM!

What can I say, avoid this company at all costs. THey do not honor their service agreement. They try to sell you more expensive hosting and create artificial problems only upselling you can solve. They do not do business honestly. Avoid them!

Viladin

1 — 

Absolutely abysmal

Webhostingpad decided, after a month into my 3-year paid contract with them, to shut down my website and absolutely refuse to refund me anything, citing that my site was abusing the CPU limits. I've been a loyal customer for over 10 years and this is what I get? Absolutely abysmal. Took my business elsewhere.

Angry J

1 — 

Sucks

Worst hosting company there is. In the almost 15 years I've been with them I've had all my data lost once, have had to be switched servers twice, have had numerous downtimes, have had my website suspended multiple times because of hackers, and a whole host of other problems. Do yourself a favor and if you can afford to spend more money elsewhere, DO IT!

Kimberly

1 — 

WebHostingPad is a Rip-off

WebHostingPad has downgraded their services half-way of the prepaid five-year term.

I've been with them for about seven years. The first five-year agreement was at $1.99/month, and everything went smoothly. When my contract expired, I searched for some other options, but decided to stay with WebHostingPad. The next five-year block of time was contracted at $3.49/month. The explanation was that the $1.99 fee is the introductory offer for the new customers only. When you've been with them for a while, they treat you with the nice additional fee for being a loyal customer. Well, I took it because I didn't have the time or energy to migrate my sites back then. And, since everything had gone quite smoothly prior to this, I decided to swallow the bitter pill and stay with WebHostingPad.

A little under half-way of this five-year term, WebHostingPad migrated my websites to a new server. With this migration, I have lost the very important, useful, and pretty much basic functions of cPanel and the emails. For example, I cannot enter start time and end time with email autoresponder function. This means that every Friday I have to type a new out-of-the-office message from scratch. And every Monday morning, I have to delete it. If I need to take a day off in the middle of the week, this routine of retyping and deleting continues. This really adds to my busy schedule. Another problem, they took away an automatic email configuration option. I used to be able to download a configuration file and install it automatically into my email client every time I create a new email account. Now, I have to do this manually. In addition, my unlimited email accounts have become limited. I can only send up to 500 messages per month. This is restricting me, because my work depends on international communication all day long. I send a lot of emails. I had to open a Gmail account and will be switching to it. Surprisingly enough, the reliable Gmail gives you unlimited services for free! (Except for the storage.) The prepaid service with WebHostingPad took away the promised unlimited hosting options.

The cPanel has become very limited with this migration. I am submitting a screenshot with this review. I cannot start to describe the functions that I lost in the midterm of my contract.

Upon my inquiry about reimbursement for the reduced services, I received a response that the money I paid for the full service will not be reimbursed despite the diminished services.

Since this migration and the withdrawal of the promised services, I have been on chat with the customer support constantly. I simply don't have the time to tackle every issue that arises.

What this boils down to, is that I will be looking for a different web-hosting service provider and migrating my affairs to a new server. I will have to cut my losses and write off this expense.

My message to you is this. If you are happy with WedHostingPad now, that's fine. I had been happy with them for about seven years. I wrote five-star reviews on their site. Everything went smoothly. But, based on my experience, I have to say, be careful signing long-term agreements with them. They may downgrade you somewhere midterm and try to sell to you the "additional" services that you would have been entitled to in the first place.

Yes, they are trying to sell the unlimited emails and bandwidth back to me.

Hope this helps.

Lee

5 — 

Been with them nearly 10 years

I've been with WebHostingPad nearly 10 years. They do occasionally have downtime but after I complained they switched me to a new server and their support has always been helpful to me whenever I needed it. If you stay on top of their deals you can renew your hosting service for around $2 a month (purchased for 5 years), otherwise, it will bill around $4 or $5 a month if you let it run out and auto renew. Their domain renewal is fixed $15 a year regardless of how many years you renew for (a little higher than most but you can get any available domain). My site is a photography site, www.MrClickProductions.com and I use small images to battle their slow load times. As a small business their affordable rates and customer support by phone (which few online cheap places have these days) have made the hosting service well worth it for me. I do wish they had a better website builder as I am not the best at web coding.

Joe B

1 — 

webhostingpad is a nightmare

Webhostingpad had a server crash and sent ZERO communication about it. They have no backups even when you set up your backup information. Even my junky home system has backups.

My website was moved to another server, which I only found after realizing my email was non-functional (also set up with this host). tldr; webhostingpad will not restore your data or databases after their crappy systems crash, because they can't. end of story - stay away

Secops

2 — 

total mess

This hosting provider is a total mess. Keep away from them. One day I discovered that my website was migrated to some new IP and it has stale 6 months old data. All my new recent posts got disappeared even my Wordpress version was old in fact I upgraded it. It seems they had some problems on their side and restored websites from an old backup on the new server. But this data was 6 months old. As a result all my data during this 6 month time period...

Tomas M

1 — 

STAY AWAY

This company, Webhosting Pad is very good at stealing money from customers, do yourself a favor and stay away. I signed up with them 3 years ago because the price was appealing. As soon as I pointed my domain to their email servers, there was a flood of spam coming in, I mean thousands of spam emails every day. They make you pay for additional Baracuda spam filter which has not done a good job either. Just be prepared to deal with this. Webhosting was a bad experience either, additional fees for backup, downtime, tech support that lies to the customers about fixing something while they don’t, etc. etc… So after 3 years I moved my service elsewhere. My credit card was expired and I thought they would just not charge and cancel my service. I was wrong, they charged my card for additional full 3 years ($166+). I immediately canceled the service, I was about 7 days late and my files were moved already. I told them I will not use the hosting and I’d like my money back for 3 years I will not use at all. They refused after multiple emails, basically they just take your money and run. There is no way to talk to any billing management people on the phone, email ONLY. What they do is tell you you’re late and your fault, we keep your money. Also they won’t forget to add is that you will be sent to collections if you attempt to charge money back via the credit card company.
These people are crooks, they deserve to go out of business TODAY. Don’t make the same mistake I did, find someone honest out there.

James O

1 — 

Terrible

This company is absolutely terrible to do business with. I wish I had researched them before doing business with them. Reviews and ratings are all over the internet. But yes they got me too. I canceled my hosting with them but paid for my domain name & canceled their services for web hosting. Also I canceled the auto renewal of allowing them to withdraw the fees from my bank. They took it upon themselves to still charge my bank account and refuse to refund my money. Trust me, there are many great web hosting sites out there.

Go on the net and do research before, check reviews, check for fraud reports & check for scam alerts before using any web hosting service. This company fails all the previously stated.

Franky

1 — 

If you can put up with NOT being able to send emails, then webhostingpad.com is for you!

They are cheap and they host tons and tons of scammers and abusers and you are hosted together with those jerks, which means emails to most prominent email providers will all bounce.

Tickets – I had tons of them in the past with this issue!
Resolution – “we clean the IP” – but nothing happens or it stays clean a day if you’re lucky

Reporting-MTA: dns; server503.webhostingpad.com
Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected]
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; mx1.hotmail.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 SC-001 (SNT004-MC6F7) Unfortunately, messages from 204.93.163.106 weren’t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list. You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors.

Neal

5 — 

What you pay for

I joined webhostingpad.com several years ago at a point where I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue my blog. It was just cheap enough to keep me in the game, and I ported my content from typepad. For what I needed, it worked fine: hone my web skills, play around with different applications, be there when I needed to host something for work.

Recently my needs increased — I’m running about 40GB right now, with about 80 database-driven subsites. I shifted to Power Plan Plus and I’m relatively satisfied. Even before the shift, they made good on their unlimited bandwidth/databases/storage promise. It’s also been a little slow and the uptime could be better. Note that you have to ask for your unlimited storage in 10GB increments. They say it is to prevent you from using the site as a download station.

When I joined they made it plain there was limited support. They won’t hold your hand; the really stupid questions are ignored but the ones related to their side of the bargain — keeping the servers running and your space in the cloud open — get handled quickly.

Telling anecdote: Their phpMyAdmin install glitched when I needed to export some databases. I contacted customer service, and they are downloading them for me.

That said, there has been some fall-off — the customer service phone number is gone, for one, and live chat recently started defaulting to email.

I haven’t tried the automated website options (like wordpress installation or wix).

When all I needed was a place to hang my site, webhostingpad.com did the job.

James

1 — 

Warning: Do not use this company

This company has no morals. They will shut your website if you are so much as a few hours overdue your subscrition. If you are looking for a company that cares about their clients, then look elsewhere. I stayed with this company because in the early days they were good. Now they have autimated just about as much as anything they can and they are just interested in grabbing anyones money.

HARRY

1 — 

STAY AWAY FROM WEBHOSTING PAD! SAVE YOUR MONEY!

Webhosting Pad is the most terrible hosting company. I signed up a 3-year hosting plan (with a free 1 year domain) with Webhosting Pad on Aug 05, 2016. It’s a unlimited plan, but I only got 10G web space. They promised 30 day refund guarantee, but they only let my website SLOWLY work for the first month, after the first month I was unable to login to my cPanel and website was down.

After my cPanel and website completely stopped working on Sept 09, 2016, I contacted Webhosting Pad to request account cancellation with refund, but Web Hosting Pad refused to refund me and suspended my account! I paid $71.64USD for a 3 year hosting plan, but the server only SLOWLY worked for the first month, then completely stopped working. They suspended my account but took my money. Now, I lost $71.64USD, and got nothing from Webhosting Pad.

Webhosting Pad is the most terrible company! STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY! SAVE YOUR MONEY!

John C

2 — 

Leaving Webhostingpad.com after several years.

Have hosted several sites with WebHostingPad for a good few years. Until recently, the server response was satisfactory, the uptime acceptable and overall I was satisfied with service.

Their support is very fast to respond and sort out problems but, recently, I have had too many reasons to contact them. Requests timing out (including inability to load cPanel to see what was going on), DNS resolution problems and “500” (internal server error) responses were all becoming an everyday occurence (in fact almost everytime I attempted to connect).
Three days ago I moved all but one of my domains to a new host with a “cloud” based solution and the difference in speed and reliability is astonishing (my forum users have been commenting on the difference).

Regarding the plan I am on with WebHostingPad, it is “Power Plan” and my last invoice (April 2015) for service until April 2017 was 119.76 USD. I work that out to be 4.99USD per month…. more than the cost mentioned in review above.

My new host (based in London) charges 49.99GBP per year (that’s about 65USD at current exchange rate) but it is well worth the price…. And, as they say, “you get what you pay for”…. Also they migrated all my sites, including a SMF forum, for free!

Adriana

3 — 

We Can't Recommned This

I had an account with them for sometime. It’s not very good but it’s cheap. I just want publish something on web. So I live with it. But recently they suspend my account very often for reasons I don’t know. So I have transfer out. When I transfer out they don’t release my domain name. It’s a nightmare. Don’t event think about.

Daniel

1 — 

Web Hosting Pad is rubbish

I was using Web Hosting Pad for 6 months until I started to get “server not found” messages. Several times I got in touch with their customer support, but no help. They said that they will investigate and fix it, but this never happened.

Eventually I wanted to move out, but realized that they had locked my domain. I managed to transfer out my website files, but no domain. They literally hijacked it… After reading their TOS, I understood that I actually agreed for that. Nevertheless, it’s very bad practice from their site.

I’d avoid it.

Andres D

4 — 

Expectations met

I hired Web Hosting Pad services to get a cheap easy-to-manage hosting service. Took advantage of a great deal for a 3 years plan and I feel lucky for betting on that.

Their cheapest plan covers all the needs of any modern website that doesn’t get millions of hits. Their support is technically very good and always replied my tickets in the same day.

Only drawback is that the few times they go through some hiccups (all providers do) I don’t see any option to get informed about it and have to rely on up-time monitors’ alerts where I usually get a 99.9% up-time.