Let’s check it out.
Reliability
Just How Reliable Are They?
With a 99.9% uptime you can guarantee decent website uptime but that guarantee does appear to come with some strange clauses that almost helps APlus get out of any sticky situation. That 99.9% is also measured over 3 months as opposed to most hosting plan who do it over 1 month.
The data centre is housed in Phoenix Arizona, but we don’t get any more details on how reliable they are. Looking at online reviews to support this section doesn’t help APlus score points, with a lot of reviews complaining about poor Uptime.
Features
Limited Features on the Cheaper Plans
All hosting plans comes with 1 free domain and then vary in features and limits depending on how high up the scale you decide to go. For the basic hosting solution you will find yourself with 100GB of storage, 500GB of data transfer, 2 hosted domain, 5 email addresses and 2GB of email space. A the top end of the scale you will find some unlimited options such as storage, transfer, and hosted domain, with 500 email addresses with a 5GB capped storage.
Support
No Real Effort in The Support Channels
Support comes in several areas and you can expect to see live chat, US phone support, and FAQ area and social channels available. No email address is provided, ticket system or telephone number for outside the US. The social channels all seem to be one-way traffic as well so you may not receive a reply here.
- 24/7 support
- Live chat
- Ticket System
- No Email
- Social is One-Way Traffic
- No Phone Number for Overseas
- Slow Replies
Pricing
Not as Competitive as They Could be
Pricing at APlus.net is as straightforward as it comes with 3 types of web hosting that is aimed at small to medium sized organisations. For $9.99 you can unlock the APlus.net basic plan which provides everything you need to get started in the online world, whilst the mid-tier package is yours for $10 more, and then for $29.99 per month you can get your hands on the Professional hosting option.
Now, the professional plan at $29.99 offers features that can be seen on other hosting websites for a fraction of the price, so in reality APLus.net is expensive when you do a like-for-like. There doesn’t seem to be any money back guarantee here either.
User-Friendly
A Very Nice Looking Site
The Aplus.Net site is one of its best features as it lays everything out perfectly for the end-user. As soon as you hit the homepage you are greeted with a site that knows what the user wants, and that is simple menus, easy to see hosting plans and prices to accompany them. There really is no confusion or navigating around to try and find prices, it’s as straightforward as sites come.
APlus.net doesn’t state what control panel they use, they just reference a ‘powerful control panel’ so its hard to tell from the site what exactly that is. From review it seems to be a customised control panel built by APlus so don’t expect to see CPanel here.
Summary
A Host That Offers Good and Bad Points
APlus offer a good alternative to hosting your website with decent features and a website that has been well thought out and designed for the user in mind. It’s a shame that the service is let down by a unstable reliability guarantee, poor support and prices that are over your standard hosting plans that you find on other sites.
Pros
- Great looking website
- 3 main plans to select from
- 99.95 Uptime
- Good amount of features
Cons
- Poor support
- No CPanel
- inability to scale
- a lot of downtime and problems