Hostdog was founded in 2002. It specializes in web hosting services and supports Linux operating systems (CentOS, Red Hat, Debian, and Ubuntu). The company also offers VPS, dedicated servers, reseller services, and domain name registration. The company is based in Thessaloniki (Greece), its data center is based in Germany (Hetzner), and its website can be switched between the English, Spanish, and Greek languages.
Features and Ease of Use
Hostdog offers four web hosting plans: economy, budget, business, and premium. The web space on offer for these plans is 1000 MB, 2000 MB, 8000 MB, and 16000 MB respectively. All the plans come with the following features:
- Unlimited traffic (bandwidth)
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Unlimited emails
- Unlimited subdomains
- Unlimited parked domains
- cPanel control panel
- Softaculous installer for 300+ scripts
- Free installation of over 340 web apps
You will also get SSH access and developer tools as value-added services. While Git will let you manage your codebase, Ruby will facilitate rapid development. With Drush, you can manage your Drupal installations easily, and Node.js will help you build agile and fast network applications.
Some additional features on offer include:
- Daily backups
- Firewall protection
- 99% minimum uptime guarantee
- High-speed access to all internet uplinks
Hostdog’s uptime guarantee is lower than the industry average. However, the company offers security (with CloudLinux), speed (via Varnish, SSD, Cloudflare, Nginx), and reliability (through DELL servers and firewall). All these things suggest a stable hosting provider.
Pricing and Support
Hostdog’s shared and VPS hosting plans are competitively priced to match the industry average. However, the real deal is the company’s dedicated servers that are cheaper than usual and come with full root access, total web host management, and free support (for the first month).
Hostdog’s shared web hosting plans are payable yearly, while its VPS hosting plans and dedicated servers are payable on a monthly basis. You can pay for these plans using PayPal, credit card (Visa, Mastercard), or bank deposit, and you can also use those methods to buy credits from Hostdog.
Hostdog’s support staff is available 24/7 for free to solve your technical problems and answer your queries regarding the company’s services. The quickest way to reach them is by phone during business hours. You can also reach them 24/7 via email for emergency issues. Unfortunately, I failed to get any response after filling out their online contact form, which is another way for you (supposedly) to contact the company. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate their advertised online chat to find out why.
In terms of self-help options, this company provides an FAQ page and a knowledge base in the form of a blog. However, it appears that the knowledge base hasn’t received updates for at least four years.
