Overview
One Web Hosting Solution That You Can’t Miss
A Small Orange is definitely one of those unheard of web hosting companies, but don’t let that steer you away from them, because they are offer simple and clear hosting packages. What you get with A Small Orange is uncluttered and crystal clear information that provides a reliable service to its users. Prices range from just under $3 per month for the shared hosting option and up to $100 for dedicated, and A Small Orange also offer a full refund policy.
Reliability
Transparent About Uptime but Vague About Information
What do I say about the reliability? It’s fairly transparent but vague at the same time. By this I mean that they do offer information on uptime and data centres but don’t really go out of their way to provide historical data for uptime or in-depth information on servers etc. That’s not a massive issue though as they do guarantee 99.9% uptime with a page that shows server status details. A Small Orange also monitor their servers using CCTV, redundancy power systems which come in the form of a backup battery, and this is all powered by diesel.
Features
Features That Will Blow Your Mind!
There are some really good features available over at A Small Orange, and all shared hosting plans come with daily backups, an SSD driven hosting environment, and automatic script installation. However, the real selling point for me is that they offer unlimited POP3, MySQL, Mailing Lists, Email Forwarders, Sub-domains, and FTP Accounts, which is an offer that you won’t find on many hosting websites. For extra costs you can also buy more bandwidth for your plan, a premium support option, and you can also take out dedicated IP addresses for SSL sites.
Support
Support Options Let The Down
If one area of our review lets A Small Orange down its the support that they offer. It almost seems like they have been so busy perfecting every other angle of the business that they haven’t had time to bother about customer support. All of the support is outsourced, and the support workers work remotely. This can lead to a whole host of problems and what many customers have reported is that they haven’t been able to get sufficient advice or answers to some of the more technical questions. Support is 24/7/365 but live chat isn’t available over the weekend periods. You can get in contact by email and ticket system but there is absolutely no telephone support available.
- 24/7/365 support
- Community Forum
- Ticket System
- Live chat only on during weekdays
- Support team scattered across the USA
- No telephone support offered
Pricing
Prices to Suit Anyone Requirements
There are a total of 5 hosting plans which range from Shared Hosting to Hybrid and Dedicated hosting, and everything in between. The prices and requirements can meet the needs of an individual or small company up to large enterprises. For the lowest paid plan you can pick yourself up a shared hosting account which can get your business up off the ground in no time. Reseller hosting starts at $15 per month whilst Business hosting and Cloud VPS hosting, both begin at $20 per month.
User-Friendly
One of The Best Web Hosting Sites Out There
The website itself is amazingly well designed, and everything is simply laid-out and accessible from the homepage. You can either select bundles or ‘find your perfect plan’ which lists all the plans available. There is no clutter, no needless content and images, it’s simple plain and just brilliant. CPanel comes with most plans but double check this before buying as it appears to be missing on some plans. CPanel is an excellent control panel tool for beginners and experienced users and just makes life easier when managing your site and hosting. This is one of my favourite web hosting sites to be on, I would actually say it’s a pleasure to navigate around.
Summary
A Strong Contender For One of The Best Shared Hosting Platforms
A Small Orange is a really great hosting solution for small to medium sized businesses, with the option to scale up. The user-friendly feel of the site and the clear service line-up is definitely a 10/10 for me as anyone from a basic Internet user to an advanced user can jump onto the site and feel comfortable in seconds. The plans are all nicely priced and offer some feature packed tools and options that can help you take control of your website. A refund policy and a 45-day money back guarantee are just more tempting reason to take out a hosting plan, with the only one big drawback being the lack of support.
Pros
- User-friendly site
- Great prices for small to large companies
- Strong Features & Tools
- Refund and 45-Day Money Back Guarantee
Cons
- No telephone number
- Live chat not available on weekends
- Support staff are not located near data center
