Getting Started with Hostens

Hostens is, to put it simply, one of the easiest hosting services I’ve honestly reviewed thus far. From the very moment you lay your eyes on the website, it has this charming feel to it, and you can see that, the little budget they did have for the design, went into creating actual, unique art, and not just a flat vector design like most of their competition. This is something that genuinely stuck out for me.

Anyway, you can click on “More Info” on the package you want in order to get started.

Since I’m extremely cheap, I’ll go with the shared hosting plan, as it’s just what I’m looking for.

When I saw this I was like damn, hosting for 90 cents? I can’t even pay for my breakfast with that kind of money, this is too good to be true.

Well, it ended up being that way - as you see, this is only the case for the 3-year plan.

When you want to go for the single-month route, things look something like this.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is indeed still one of the cheapest hosting providers out there, and you cannot really get a lot more than this for $3. If I was on a budget, I’d definitely go with the S10 plan for $3, so I ended up picking that one for the purposes of this review. Feel free to pick the plan that works best for you though.

Now, on the next step, you can register a new domain through Hostens, transfer your previously bought domain, update the nameservers on your existing domain, or use a free subdomain.

You can choose the billing cycle, the server location, and purchase two additional services, including:

• SSL Certificates – PositiveSSL
• SPAM Filter – SpamExperts Spam Filter

You’ll then need to enter additional information, such as picking the payment method and adding your information.

You need to read and accept the terms of service, privacy policy, refund policy, and data processing agreement, and eventually click on checkout.

You’ll then receive the order confirmation.

When you first log in, you will receive a verification email, and you will need to enter the code and click on “Verify” in order to continue.

Here’s how the email will end up looking like.

Then all you have to do is log in.

And you should be good to go.

Setting Things up at Hostens

From the main dashboard, you’ll see four things that make up the majority of the page.

You have invoices, support, balance, and referral bonus.

Invoices show you a log of all of the services you are using, and how much you need to pay, and their status.

In the support area, you can place a new order, find the client area, and even contact support

Now, in the referral bonus tab, you can actually get a smart link and marketing details, promote the link with ads, track the orders, and receive 50% commission on every sale, where you can collect your referral bonus and cover 100% of your next purchase.

In the order tab, you also have a lot of options.

You have web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, secure VPN, SSL Certificates, Spam Filter, Domains, and DNS.

Web Hosting

You can scale your order here, and upgrade per requirement.

Reseller Hosting

The same can be said for reseller hosting.

VPS Hosting

This lets you pick between Linux and Windows, which is nice.

Secure VPN

This gives you access to VPN services.

The prices are different, and you get a different bandwidth limit throughout as well as device support.

SSL Certificates

Here you can set up and even purchase an SSL Certificate, and the process itself is simplistic.

Here are your choices:

• PositiveSSL
• PositiveSSL SAN
• PositiveSSL Wildcard
• GeoTrust TrueBusinessID
• GeoTrust TrueBusinessID SAN
• GeoTrust TrueBusinessID Wildcard
• GeoTrust TrueBusinessID EV
• GeoTrust TrueBusinessID EV SAN

SPAM Filters

This hosting provider uses SpamExperts as their main software.

You can secure your inbox from spam as well as malicious mail on a daily basis.

Domains

This tab essentially lets you purchase a lot more domains, and can guide you through the entire process. I genuinely like it here because you have all of the prices on the right side of the screen.

DNS

Hostens also offers a free DNS Manager.

All you have to do is set it up; it’s quite intuitive and a cool freebie nonetheless.

Now, once the payment has been processed, your home screen should look like this.

Now, on services, click on Web Hosting, and you’ll see a lot of features here.

 Service Details

Here you can review your domain, your label, your status, your registration date, the first payment amount, the recurring amount, the next due date, and the billing cycle. You also have access to information such as hostname, shared IP address, and even server location.

 Login Details

On the login details tab, you’ll be able to see the URL that you can use to log in, as well as the username, and the password.

When you log in, here’s where you will be able to access your cPanel.

We’ll get into this further down the line, for now, let’s move on to the other features.

 Reset Password

Now, since I showed you my password in the previous screenshot, I’ll change it. This is why Hostens has a convenience reset password option, where with a single click, you can reset your password.

Easy install an app

Here you can easily install any app. All you have to do is click on the little “Install” text under reach one of them.

 Login to cPanel

You also have a direct open cPanel page, which essentially does the same thing as the previously mentioned menu, but hey, convenience.

 Site Builder

The site builder opens the website builder Hostens has.

Here, you can select from and install from a wide assortment of themes.

 Access WebMail

This lets you access the webmail.

 Improve your SEO

The SEO is managed through MarketGoo, and you can create an account and log in to it here.

MarketGoo is advertised as the easiest app to improve your website traffic as well as position in search engines, through easy-to-follow tasks and simple analytics. There is no need for you to be tech-savvy or an expert in SEO to optimize everything.

Account Usage / Info

In the account statistics tab, you’ll be able to view quite a lot.

You can review the monthly bandwidth transfer, disk space usage, email accounts, mailing lists, add-on domains, subdomains, parked domains, FTP accounts, All SQL Databases, email forwarders, and email filters.

Manual Service Renew

Here you can manually renew the service if the needs ever arise.

Change Billing Cycle

Here, you have the ability to change the billing cycle of your service. You can change and upgrade to a higher cycle, such as going from monthly to annual cycle.

Upgrade / Downgrade

This is one of the simplest ways through which you can scale things up, as you can switch from one web hosting plan to another with ease.

Simply click on the drop-down menu, and you can select between S20, S40, and S80.

Request Cancellation

As the name might imply, here you can cancel your subscription.

All data will be deleted, and you can even request a refund here.

cPanel Functions

cPanel has a few main categories here.

Web Applications

Here you can view the featured applications, and these are different with every host. In the case of Hostens, you have access to PrestaShop, Magento, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, phpBB, and MediaWiki.

Files

Here you’ll have access to the file manager, images, directory privacy, disk usage, web disk, FTP Accounts, FTP Connections, Backup, Backup Wizard, Git Version Control, File and Directory Restoration, and Inode Usage.

Databases

This gives you access to phpMyAdmin, MySQL Databases, MySQL Database Wizard, and Remote MySQL.

Domains

Here you’ll have access to Site Publisher, Domains, Add-on Domains, Subdomains, Aliases, Redirects, and Dynamic DNS.

Email

Here you’ll gain access to a lot of very useful cPanel email features, including Email Accounts, Forwarders, Autoresponders, Default Address, Mailing Lists, Track Delivery, Global Email Filters, Email Filters, Email Deliverability, Address Importer, Spam Filters, Encryption, BoxTrapper, Calendars and Contacts, and Email Disk Usage.

Metrics

In terms of Metrics, you’ll be able to see your visitors, the errors, the bandwidth usage and availability, the raw access, the Awstats, the Analog Stats, the Webalizer, the Webalizer FTP, The Resource Usage, and the ModSecurity Logs.

Security

In terms of Security, you have access to SSH Access, IP Blocker, SSL/TLS, Manage API Tokens, Hotlink Protection, Leech Protection, ModSecurity, SSL/TLS Status, Two-Factor Authentication, and ImunifyAV.

Software

In terms of software availability, you have access to the Installatron Applications installer, PHP PEAR Packages, Perl Modules, Site Software, Optimize Website, Select PHP Version, Setup Python App, Setup Ruby App, and Site Builder.

Advanced

On the Advanced tab, you have access to the Terminal, the Cron Jobs, The Indexes, the Error Pages, the Apache Handlers, and the MIME Types.

Preferences and Support

Here you’ll be able to see password and security, contact information, user manager, contact support, and the support knowledge base.

Level of Support at Hostens

Before you contact the support team, know that you have full access to the knowledge base.

When it comes to the support team themselves, they can be accessed through live chat support.

Here’s how the experience with the support staff went like.

To test them, I requested a refund, something I always do.

So far so good, they responded within minutes and even wanted to do all of the work for me. You see, typically on most web hosting platforms, you have to manually close the server, and then send a ticketing request for a refund.

Here, I just had to confirm that I give them permission to close everything and give out the refund, and the support staff did all of the work for me, this was extremely convenient.

Finally, you’ll see this confirmation.

White label reseller hosting isolates one site from another one, so it’s easier to manage different sites, especially if the different scripts or CMSes are used.

Security and Backups

I’ll skip the cPanel security features, as I mentioned before. Hostens provides three unique security services: SSL Certificates, Spam Filter, and a Secure VPN.

To be more specific, Hostens offers Domain Validated, Organization Validated, and Extended Validation SSL plans, all of which feature 256-bit encryption and are nearly 100% compatible with browsers and systems.

The SpamExperts SPAM Filter supports one domain, with Advanced SPAM protection, Anti-virus protection, Quarantine, Advanced configurations, and unlimited Email accounts.

Still, what I like the most about Hostens is its provision of three different VPN plans, small, medium, and large. All VPN plans offer AES-256 encryption, at least 1 Gbit port speed, fast and easy set-up, and OpenVPN/L2TP. The difference lies in the bandwidth and the number of devices it supports, offering up to four in the most expensive plan.

Hostens offers backups as an add-on service for its VPS and Container VPS plans. In general, their terms depend on the hosting plan you have. However, you can expect daily and weekly backups. Furthermore, they store the backups for up to two weeks, whereas each new backup overwrites the old one. Hostens also charges extra for backup restoration services.

Specific Features of Hostens

Now, when it comes to the specific features of Hostens, you have free domains when you select an annual plan, including applications such as the ability to install, update and back up over 100 scripts and content management systems, a free website builder, 24/7 support, cloud infrastructure and a lot of useful tools.

Pricing

It starts from $0.90 per 3-year plan in terms of shared web hosting, up to $3.60.

On the single-month plan, it starts from $3.00 to $12.00.

Now, each of the Unmanaged VPS hosting plans has a different price.

• On Linux, the cheapest plan starts at $6.00 for a single month.
• On Windows, the cheapest plan starts at $15.00 for a single month.
• On Container VPS, the cheapest plan starts at $4.00 for a single month.
• On Storage VPS, the cheapest plan starts at $4.00 for a single month.

When it comes to the white label reseller hosting plans and packages, the three-year plans range from $1.80 per month up to $7.20 per month.

In the single-month plan, it starts at $6.00 to $24.00.

Performance, Speed and Uptime

While I was testing the service, I experienced no downtime. In terms of speed, the SSD speeds capped out at 100mb/s from my testing, so it isn’t quite the fastest one out there.

The page itself loaded quickly, however, I had no extensions installed, so your experience may differ. Overall, it’s solid, but not quite the fastest hosting provider out there.

Summary

As I summarize Hostens, I genuinely feel like I went on quite the adventure. It is a unique hosting provider by all means. The website has a unique theme and even a “mascot” of sorts that you will remember for days even after reading this review. It has this cute, warm feeling to the entire design, with bright colors and easily accessible tools that keep you engaged, and is extremely easy to manage.

In terms of features, you are getting quite a lot, and the cPanel implementation will make you feel right at home as with any other hosting provider. The main selling factor here is definitely the price, as it is one of the most affordable hosting providers, even when you opt-in for the single-month plan. Overall I enjoyed my experience here, and I genuinely feel like this is the perfect hosting provider for newcomers to begin their journey.