Overview
SingleHop Cloud Hosting: Secure & Productive Clouds
SingleHop is a company with over five years of market experience. In that time, they gained the reputation of being a tried-and-true cloud host. However, their advantages are shadowed by small yet notable disadvantages. They do have a really great set of features and extra-class security options, such as SAN-based storage, automatic failover, full customizable machines, and resource-based billing.
While their features may be great, they still only have 1TB of bandwidth included into every plan, which can’t compete with offers made by other cloud hosts. Also, the prices for their low-end servers are over the average.
Why Choose SingleHop Cloud Hosting?
- Hourly usage-based billing
- SAN cloud storage
- Servers ready in 1 min.
- Custom control panel
- Great security options
Want to know if SingleHop Cloud Hosting is right for you?
Let’s check it out.
Uptime & Reliability
Great Uptime Based on Secure Servers
Like many other cloud host companies, SingleHop have 100% SLAs. Uptime testing systems say, in turn, that the company’s home page has been online for 99.98% or less of time in the last five years. Always keep in mind different servers can behave in different ways.
In addition to 100% uptime commitments, SH also makes concessions for refunds, but you must read the fine print carefully to see what exactly qualifies for a refund.
Stable performance of their servers is ensured by smart auto-scaling systems, 100% power uptime, automatic failover and quick hardware replacement.
Features
Good Hardware, But Not More
SingleHop has great hardware specs, but if you want to get some additional features, they won’t provide you with many.
Their public cloud is powered by VMWare, which is a tried-and-true environment that will help you manage the cloud with great ease. Every server has at least one CPU running at 2.4GHz and the minimum of 1GB memory. Hard disks of this cloud host are RAID-protected.
The choice of operation systems includes both Linux and Windows options. However, the latest Windows Server 2012 distribution is still unavailable. SingleHop also offers managed services at the cost of extra fees. Some users claim that the best customer support comes with these services. They don’t have an option of server backup, so you should also count it when making the final decision.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Disk Space | Different server plans include 25GB-100GB of SAN storage with RAID protection. The customization tool can extend storage to 150GB. |
| CPU | Every vCPU has 2.4GHz capacity. Different plans have up to 6 vCores, but you can increase the performance up to 16 cores. |
| Bandwidth | Every server has 1TB bandwidth. It can be increased up to 13TB monthly. Every over-plan gigabyte will cost you $0.10. |
| RAM | Their basic servers have only 1GB RAM, but you can get as much as 16GB for incredible cloud performance. |
| Control Panel | LEAP v3 custom control panel is provided in every package. It has all you need, plus work on mobile devices. |
| Operation System | You can run on Linux CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise and Ubuntu, or on Windows 2008 R2. |
Support
Classic 24×7 Support
This cloud host does not offer anything new in terms of customer support. It provides you with all market standards: a toll-free number for U.S. clients, live chat, and email tickets. Of course, everything works 24/7. The quality of support is par at best. Easy tickets take them at least 10-30 minutes to respond, while harder tasks require a couple of hours if not days. Again, the quality of customer support here may depend on whether or not you purchased the additional service plan.
SingleHop’s response times are guaranteed into the SLAs. They promise to respond to your ticket within 1 hour, update you every 2 hours, and escalate you to senior staff in case of emergency within 90 minutes. While they have a company blog, they do not provide a forum or knowledgebase.
- Company blog
- Support time guarantees
- Toll-free US phone number
- 24/7 live chat, phone and email
- No forum and knowledgebase
- Hard cases take time
Pricing
Not Too Competitive
The prices for SingleHop servers are more or less adequate. For instance, the cheapest offer will cost you $45.40/mo, which is rather good money for the set of features you get. Another advantage of this cloud host is their hour-based billing. You just pay for what you use, but hourly prices are a bit higher than monthly plans. Some extra services offered by SH cost adequate money, but the price for over-plan traffic ($0.10/GB) is much higher than that of their competitors.
The spotlight is really on public cloud solutions provided by SingleHop. If you need a finer solution that will be perfectly adjusted to your needs, try Private Cloud plans offered by this company. However, you need to request a quote to find out the prices for these packages.
User Friendly
Full Control with Comfort
The user-friendliness is one of the strongest points of SingleHop. Every one of their plans includes LEAP v3 control panel, which is their own development along with all necessary features. And one of the best things about LEAP is that you can use it with your mobile apps. Thus, cloud control at SingleHop is available anytime and anywhere. Finally, LEAP has several interfaces, which makes it developer-friendly as well.
The company’s website is convenient. The navigation is simple, and it doesn’t take much effort to find necessary information. You will also like their server customization tool that you must use before every purchase
+ Easy-to-use website navigation
+ Control panel with mobile apps
+ User-oriented SLAs
Summary
SingleHop is a decent company that can meet the requirements of both small and big web projects. They have some pricing and support peculiarities, but the overall image of this company is positive. They have great hardware, solid security features, and many additional services that help make this a trustworthy cloud host.
Pros
- VMWare environment
- Fast server deployment
- RAID and SAN storage
- Mobile cloud management
- Great server hardware
Cons
- No backups
- Hourly prices exceed monthly fees
- Possible long support time
- Better support available once you purchase the service plan
- Many fine print details regarding cancellation and refunds
