Overview:

PowWeb was founded in 1999 and to this day is one of the leaders in low-cost reliable webhosting. PowWeb caters mostly to small to mid range business and personal sites, offering a lot for very little. PowWeb manges and operates their own equipment and software, and their software and infrastructure was developed internally by their highly skilled programmers and developers. Priding themselves on customer support and being “unbeatable in terms of reliability, quality, and performance in the Web hosting industry” PowWeb is an established company with deep roots in the industry.

Features and Prices:

PowWeb, unlike the majority of other hosts in the market, offers only one plan which is a “one size fits all” type idea instead. The aptly named “One Plan” offers quiet the impressive package for only $5.77 per month. A generous 300GB of disk space if offered along with 3000GB of bandwidth. The plan also features 75 MySQL databases and tons of scripts to meet the needs of any small business or site. Popular scripts included; Wordpress, phpBB, PHP-Nuke, and osCommerce. The site also comes PHP4 and PHP5 enabled and is multi-media ready. (flash, shockwave, MIDI, etc…) Every site comes with unlimited email accounts and unlimited email forwarding. The plan comes e-commerce ready with PayPal support and OS Cart as well as SSL certification.

Pricing is as follows:

  1. 3 month – $7.77 a month + $30 set up fee
  2. 1 year – $5.77 a month, free installation, 1 year free domain registration
  3. 2 year – $5.77 a month , free installation, 2 year free domain registration

It should be noted that the $5.77 pricing is only available during the first year only, and will cost $7.77 after.

Service and Support:

PowWeb’s customer support is top level. Their online forum community is one of the largest on the net and the amount of information available is astounding. Not satisfied? They also offer external links and resources on their page as well as a very in-depth FAQ page and knowledge base. Need to talk to someone? Their phone line, email system, and live chat are available 24/7 to help no matter when you need a question answered.
After waiting only 3 minutes on hold the technician I happened to speak to was very professional and not only did he tell me what was wrong with my script error but he guided me slowly and step by step through the process of correcting the problem. I was very pleased with my experience using their phone line.

Conclusions:

  • Pros – tons of features, lots of disk space and bandwidth, excellent pricing, one plan suits almost any small business need. Customer service is A+. Very modestly priced
  • Cons – Pricing goes up after the first year, though the price is still low. No free installation with less than 1 year commitment.
  • Other Thoughts – PowWeb offers a lot of value for what they charge but since they only offer one plan they might not be for everyone, though that plan far exceeds the needs of most small businesses or entry level users. People in the market for a cost effective host would not do wrong to investigate PowWeb for themselves.