LunarPages Review – Worth Trying The Small Business Hosting?

When you’re looking for a new Web host, you want longevity. The company you choose to host your Web site should have the ability to give you a proven track record showing a solid uptime, good speeds, excellent customer service, and a portfolio of referrals that indicates the company’s expertise and capability for handling your own site.

Let’s see the pricing list of Lunarpages at a glance with LunarPages Review:

lunarpages pricing list

The LunarPages Review

Lunarpages is one of those companies. They started in 1998 in California and now count more than 150,000 individuals and companies as customers, including CBS, NBC, Nissan, Verizon, GM, and Sony.

With data centres in San Diego and Irvine, California, Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, and Ashburn, Virginia, they have enough technology and protection to make sure that your site is covered — the extensive client list and raving testimonials paint a glowing picture. Putting all of this aside, though, there is really only one question you’re probably asking: Is Lunarpages Internet Solutions the right solution for me? Well, I looked at a long list of the most important factors for your Web site and found that there are quite a few things to consider when you make your decision.

Lunarpages Plans and Pricing [Low Introductory Pricing] – Discuss all the hosting types and their packages

Shared

Lunarpages offers six different shared hosting plans, which all include free setup, an online control panel, 24/7/365 support, PHP, Perl, and Server Side support. Each shared plan also includes unlimited subdomains.

  • Starter Hosting ($3.95/month) includes 50 GB bandwidth each month, 5 GB storage, 5 e-mail accounts, one FTP account, and one MySQL database. You get unlimited parked domains, Softaculous, and can purchase your domain name for $19.95 each year,
  • Basic Hosting ($4.95/month): includes unlimited bandwidth, storage, e-mail accounts, FTP accounts, MySQL databases, and add-on, sub, and parked domains. Your domain name is included and for just $2 more each month, you can opt for cPanel.
  • Windows Hosting ($9.95/month): Like the basic hosting plan, you receive unlimited bandwidth, storage, e-mail, MySQL databases, and subdomains. You’re limited to one FTP account, though.
  • Business Premium Hosting ($24.95/month): You get 200 GB bandwidth, 20 GB storage, unlimited e-mail, FTP, MySQL databases and sub, add-on, and parked domains. cPanel is included, as is one domain name.You also get a $25 Facebook ad credit.
  • Business Advantage Hosting ($44.95/month): This plan includes all of the unlimited features of the business premium plan, but gives you 400 GB of bandwidth and 40 GB of storage each month.
  • Business Enterprise Hosting ($64.95/month): Just like the business advantage plan, you get everything included in the business premium, but now get unlimited bandwidth and storage each month, although the unlimited storage, as part of the policy, is limited to files related to your site’s functionality.

Dedicated

They offer both Windows and Linux dedicated hosting

Linux and Windows hosting options are available in three different plans, all of which offer 10 TB of bandwidth and an option for additional bandwidth for a small fee. Each Linux plan runs CentOS, has a $10 fee for cPanel with a $35/month charge, and includes Softaculous as an add-on. Windows hosting runs Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 2012 and gives you one domain name with five IP addresses. SSH is included in the Linux plan, as are MySQL and Postgre databases. On the WIndows plan, you can opt for MSSQL databases and options for an additional monthly fee

  • Intel Core 2 Quad (Linux: $145/month; Windows 2012: $170/month standard or $220/month data center, or Server 2008 RS: $176/month): 4 GB RAM, 2×250 GB SATA and RAID1 hardware with 250 GB of space.
  • Dual Intel Xeon Quad Core ($175/month; Windows 2012: $200/month standard or $250/month data center, or Server 2008 RS: $206/month): 4 GB RAM, 2×500 GB SATA storage and 500 GB of RAID 1 space.
  • Dual Intel Xeon Hexa Core E5645 ($825/month; Windows 2012: $875/month standard or $975/month data center, or Server 2008 RS: $887/month): 64 GB RAM, 4×500 GB SATA storage, and either 1.5 TB of RAID 5 or 1 TB of RAID 10.

VPS Cloud

Scalable cloud hosting includes 50 GB of SSD enhanced storage, 2 GB of RAM, 1000 GB of bandwidth, and 1 IP address. You can sale up the RAM, bandwidth, CPU, and disk space each day for a small fee. Cloud hosting lets you choose from Linux or Windows operating systems. They require a consultation to help ensure that your VPS cloud hosting plan perfectly fits your needs.

Uptime 99.89%

Industry-standard for uptime is 99.9 percent, with many having such great uptimes that the industry average is about 99.99 percent — which means that your site is only down for about four minutes each month. Even with industry-standard, you’re looking at being down for less than 45 minutes each month. Unfortunately, Lunarpages doesn’t quite reach that standard, with an average uptime of 99.89 percent, meaning your site could be down about 47.5 minutes each month. As an average, though, it’s important to note that more concerning is Lunarpages’ inconsistency, with some months reaching 100 percent uptime and others below 99.9 percent.

Faster Page Loads

Across the industry, companies are putting up page load times of about 850 ms; Lunarpages comes in far faster, loading in about 590 ms. This means that your customers and Web visitors will have a better experience while on your site, and are much more likely to stay, rather than clicking away due to slow page load times. With speed being such an important factor in Web site success, the fact that Lunarpages meets such a high threshold is outstanding.

Free Domain Name

It’s not an exception, but it is great news that Lunarpages, along with many other hosting companies, includes a free domain name for the first year on almost all of their plans. While you’ll have to pay to renew the domain name registration for the following years, you’ll find some savings in the first year by taking advantage of this feature.

Free Site Migration

Site migration can be a costly transition — and, in detailed sites, can be time-consuming. Lunarpages make it easy to get you to site up and running when you switch to their company by completing the transfer for yours.

Premium Backup

Premium backup isn’t included with many other hosting companies, which is why I like that Lunarpages has made it a feature of their plans. Each night, the company will back up your server, and if there are any problems, they’ll restore your night on a priority basis for no additional cost.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Thirty days isn’t the longest, but it can be a relief to know that if you aren’t satisfied with the qualifying plan that you purchased from Lunarpages, you can cancel and get back the money that you paid directly to the company. Take note, though — any registrations or purchases from other companies won’t be refunded.

Support

Lunarpages offer phone support, but they prefer customers to open a ticket for support issues. The customer service representatives are very thorough and will give you great service, once you get in touch with someone. Unfortunately, some customers reported waiting as many as 12 hours for a response, which could be brutal to a Web site that is down the entire time.

Lunarpages does offer a knowledge base and frequently asked questions section to help customers find the solution for common difficulties.

Some Negative Sides Too:

Lunarpages will charge you for cPanel

cPanel is one of the features that we have grown to expect as a built-in part of a Web hosting package’s offerings. Lunarpages, though, charges customers extra each month to add the service to most plans. I realize that in their cheapest package, which is $3.95 each month, that adding in cPanel only tacks on an additional $2 per month, but in other hosts in that price point, the cPanel is already included.

The website builder tool costs extra.

Not only does Lunarpages charge you if you want to get your site set up, but they also charge extra for Web site builders. When you’re bringing a Web hosting company your business, it would seem that a good partnership would have them including site building tools, like many other hosting companies. Having to pay extra for this at Lunarpages can feel slightly unfair.

Pros and Cons in a while [Only short form of the sentence, bullet points]

Pros:

  • Lunarpages has fantastic speed, helping increase your page load times.
  • The company has a wide variety of plans and packages, which means that as your Web site grows, there is a clear path to expand your own site thanks to their expanded services.
  • Unlimited limits are very generous and will help you handle more traffic than you would expect.

Cons:

  • Lunarpages has a very high inconsistency rate for their less-than-stellar uptimes, which are below even industry standard.
  • Many of the features that are standard in other plans cost an additional fee at Lunarpages.
  • If you surpass the unlimited limitations, rather than encouraging you to upgrade, Lunarpages may just suspend your account without any warning.

Final Verdict:

I think that while Lunarpages started off great, that if you’re willing to work with a few inconsistencies, you’ll find that you can get a quality host for a reasonable price. I recommend Lunarpages.

LunarPages started out in 1998 with Maximilian Andersen and Ron Riddle. These guys were bike masons formerly. The company started out in 1998 in California, USA. If one thing is still intact with LunarPages, it’s the performance level of the host. After all these years, LunarPages has expanded to Nevada and Arizona besides California. This company has had clients like Microsoft, BlackBerry, and Sony over the years.

Lunarpages Review

The big selling point of LunarPages is that the hosting provider claims to be fast by the margin of more than 30% apart from its competitors. Also, the hosting provider offers you backup services that are premium, but they do it for free.

Over the years, LunarPages have survived the barrage of new companies. Then again it had to go through pitfalls that halted LunerPages’ progress to the new era of website hosting. I’d suggest you use this hosting if you are starting out and want a medium quality service provider for your websites.

Key features:

  • Unlimited space and bandwidth
  • 99.9% uptime guarantee
  • 24/7 hr support
  • 30 days money-back guarantee
  • Unlimited email, FTP

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