Softandhost has been providing hosting with SSD storage since 2009. It’s a Pakistan-based company with more than 2,000 customers and 1,500 registered domains. The website is available in English.
Features and Ease of Use
Softandhost sells three shared hosting plans (as well as domain registration and website design), which include the following core features:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Free automatic backups
- One free domain for life
- Unlimited add-on domains
- Unlimited disk space
- Free website transfer
The plans come with an industry standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, although there isn’t any mention of applicable compensation in the terms and conditions, so that’s something to consider, although it is quite common. The plans use SSD storage for faster performance.
There’s cPanel access, which is great for beginners, as it’s a well-known and easy to use control panel. Other features for beginners include a website building tool or, alternatively, you could hire the company to build the website for you. Plus, there’s a one-click installer.
Also, apparently, the hosting plans include “free updates for life” which is especially useful for WordPress websites as the updates can be fairly regular. I’d recommend getting the team to confirm exactly what’s included, however, as the information on the website is vague.
The features cater to experts with standard offerings that aren’t overly groundbreaking or unusual, unless there are additional ones not advertised on the website. You can expect FTP access, MySQL databases, PHP, and Cron jobs, but I’m unsure if more advanced coding scripts or SSH are supported.
Pricing and Support
The prices are cheap across the board. You can get a fully unlimited plan (unlimited domains, disk space, and traffic) for a low monthly fee. What’s more, there’s even a free domain name included (SSL certificates are an added cost).
Plan prices are displayed in one, two, or three-year terms only, but that’s common for budget brands. When I go to the check out, it was buggy from the hosting product page, so I needed to select “Sign Up” from the home page. This worked like a charm and I was able to continue through the process.
Customer service is advertised as 24/7 by phone, email, ticket, and live chat. However, when I attempted to chat with an operator on live chat at around 8:00 p.m. in Pakistan, I waited around 20 minutes for someone to pick up. When they finally did, I was still left waiting for the answer to a basic question.
Further, the knowledge base is completely empty, so that’s no use in the event of an issue.
