HostPapa says it provides “100% Service Guarantee” and boasts of 99.9% uptim or your money back. That number holds up almost perfectly during testing. The servers are great, thanks to solid hardware with Linux on board, constant site monitoring, a backup power system, and a great firewall.

HostPapa lures you in with unlimited domains and subdomains, bandwidth, disk space, MySQL 5.1 databases, and emails, then tried to fork over some big bucks for a a wide variety of features. They offer great small business tools, like programs for blogs and e-commerce solutions. If you’re a Google fan, you can spend a little bit and get access to a Google Apps package. You also get a free marketing package with some credits for promotional tools, to help get you started with a campaign.

HostPapa’s provides support via phone, live chat, or a ticketed system; however, you’ll find a plethora of complaints on the web about slow response times and poor technical support. However, we were impressed with the library of video tutorials and the user forum space—there are even  articles in Spanish and French.

In a decision I’ll call “not the coolest move,” HostPapa opted for the sneaky move of pre-checking add-ons during the check out process. So although there are great, competitive prices, pay attention to the total before you confirm payment. If it doesn’t look right, it might not be. For example, a Private Domain for $8.99, SiteLock for $14.95, and domain extension after the first free year for $15 are all auto-checked. There is a $29.95 setup fee that HostPapa generously waives when you sign up (thanks, HostPapa), but if you take advantage of the money-back guarantee and cancel, you’re then charged that previously waived $29.95 setup fee (not cool, HostPapa). If you read the fine print, you can get a good web host at a great price, but there’s a sense that feels like they’re trying to take advantage of people who aren’t paying the closest of attention. As a side note, if you want a dedicated IP address, you can do so for an extra $36 per year.

HostPapa’s site is organized and even has an often-updated blog. (Who actually has an often-updated blog?!) Packages are clearly distinguished, and signup is a breeze. HostPapa opted for cPanel, the standard across many web hosts. But even if you’re familiar with cPanel, you may be surprised by how full your HostPapa cPanel is: because of all of the included features and products even in the basic package, your page may be more cluttered than you’re used to. If you like WordPress, you can easily install it from cPanel, complementary in all packages.