Star Server is a Japan-based website hosting company owned by NetOwl. It was founded over a decade ago and specializes in shared hosting and domain registration and offers other web-related services. All servers are located in Japan.
Star Server has an attractive website in Japanese only. Bear in mind that your browser’s translation tool may not be able to translate everything on the site. All prices are displayed in Japanese yen.
Features and Ease of Use
Star Server offers five shared hosting plans — Economy, Light, Standard, Premium, and Business. The packages vary in storage, FTP accounts, MySQL databases, domains, and subdomains as follows:
- The Economy plan comes with 10 GB of storage, 20 domains, 200 subdomains, 1 FTP account, and no MySQL databases
- The Light plan comes with 50 GB of storage, 50 domains, 1,000 subdomains, 2 FTP accounts, and 1 MySQL database
- The Standard plan comes with 100 GB of storage, unlimited domains, 3,000 subdomains, 5 FTP accounts, and 20 MySQL databases
- The Premium plan comes with 150 GB of storage, unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, 10 FTP accounts, and 50 MySQL databases
- The Business plan comes with 200 GB of storage, unlimited domains, unlimited subdomains, 30 FTP accounts, and 100 MySQL databases
Some key shared hosting features include:
- Custom control panel
- Built-in application installer
- SSD storage
- Cron jobs (except for Economy plan)
- Free SSL certificate
- Email anti-virus function and spam filter
Star Server has its own web-based control panel with a user-friendly but slightly outdated interface to manage your website. I prefer industry-standard control panels such as cPanel or Plesk, but as long as this control panel is easy to use and can get things done, it’s fine by me.
The custom control panel includes a built-in application installer for CMS (content management system) applications, such as WordPress, with a few simple clicks.
This vendor enables you to utilize cron jobs for automatically scheduling tasks on your website. However, the number of tasks you can configure at once is constrained based on the plan you have chosen.
Pricing and Support
Choosing to go with Star Server won’t cost you an arm and a leg. The billing cycle options available are three months, six months. 12 months, 24 months, or 36 months. The Economy plan, however, doesn’t have a three-month option.
Star Server doesn’t have a money-back guarantee, but it offers a two-week free trial with all of its plans, and you can pay for the service via credit/debit card, PayPal, or bank transfer.
Getting information on the website is easy, thanks to a comprehensive knowledge base and a FAQ section. There’s even an FAQ section for each price plan. You can only contact customer support through a ticket system.
I had a few questions, so I submitted a ticket and got a reply within 24 hours. The email response stated that they’re only able to handle inquiries in Japanese. While I appreciate the quick response, it wasn’t helpful at all.
