Tier.net has been around in one form or another since the early 1990’s. They started out as a portal for a variety of things in the southern New York area. Over time they began offering web design and other tech services. Beginning in the early 2000’s they also began offering web hosting services to businesses in the area. In 2013 they began expanding globally and grew extremely rapidly. It was during this time that they put more of an emphasis on web hosting services.
Today Tier offers a wide range of hosting and colocation services for businesses of all types. They serve customers from the US, Central America, UK, China, India and many other locations around the world.
Uptime & Reliability
Very Good Hosting
The reliability with this company is extremely good. They offer a 100% uptime guarantee so if you do have any outages you can get credit on your bill. The hardware they use for their servers is all very nice as well, which limits the risk of any downtime. They lease space in data centers rather than owning them, which does give up some level of control. The data centers they are in, however, are all very nice so there should not be anything to worry about.
Features
Lots of Nice Features
The company has a variety of hosting services available for individuals and businesses around the world. Their shared hosting comes with cPanel in each of their three packages. All the packages have unlimited disk space and bandwidth. You can also have unlimited sub-domains and main domains (with the exception of the starter package, which can only have one main domain). They have shared IPs for the entry level and mid level packages and a dedicated IP for the enterprise option.
If you choose to move up to the VPS solutions you’ll have to choose from one of four packages. Depending on the package you get you’ll have between 1 and 12 gigs of ram and 1 to 4 CPUs. You can also get anywhere from 15 to 200 gigs of disk space in a RAID 10 configuration. For an extra $5 per month you can upgrade to SSDs.
There are plenty of dedicated servers you can select from. You can pick which base server you want and then it can be further customized from there. They have 12 models to choose from so you’re sure to get what you want. You can also select from a number of different operating systems, management options and more.
Support
Limited Info on Tech Support
They don’t provide very much information about the tech support services they provide on their website. From what I can find they are staffed 24/7 and able to help with most any type of issue. When looking at their social media accounts and other reviews it is clear that customers are happy with the level of support they get.
I did not see any FAQ or knowledge base on their site so you aren’t likely to get any self-help type of assistance with this company.
Pricing
Reasonable Pricing Options
The pricing with this company is in line with what you’d expect to see with other hosting providers today. The shared hosting service starts at $6.99 per month and goes up to $11.49. If you choose to pay semi-annually, annually, bi-annually or once every three years you can get some very significant discounts.
When you move up to VPS solutions the prices start at $15.49 and go up to $97.49 per month. They only offer discounts on annual payment options with this level of service. The prices in this level are quite good when you look at the level of hardware they offer.
Dedicated servers start at $43 and go up to $699 per month. The hardware in the servers gets significantly better the higher the price goes. In addition, there are quite a few customization that you can select with your dedicated server and some of these may cost extra.
Summary
Nice Hosting with Nice Prices
The hosting from Tier.net is quite good. They have been in business for a long time and clearly know what they are doing when it comes to serving customers. This is also a growing company so the level of service will likely continue to go up over time.
Pros:
- 100% Uptime Guarantee
- Lots of Hosting Options
- Very Well-Established Company
Cons:
- Many decisions to make, may be confusing
- Focus on Web Hosting is Fairly New