3Essentials Overview

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If there is a watchword for 3Essentials, it’s “variety.” Very rarely is a company so well outfitted for providing hosting of all sorts, but it seems that the people here had decided that there was no particular aspect of the Internet that they didn’t want running through their computers at one point or another and have made every effort to provide the infrastructure to meet all of your needs. While much of this is geared toward businesses, the piecemeal nature of the server options means that no matter what you’re planning on doing, there is likely a solution that 3Essentials has ready for you.

Ease of Use

A quick look at the website for 3Essentials shows that the company is very proud of its geek credibility. These are fairly regular people who are passionate about tech running the place. Often, this results in power systems that are also incredibly complex. That is not the case with 3Essentials. Running and operating their servers is actually remarkably easy, whether you’re just running a WordPress blog or a managed Linux cloud. The instructions are a cinch; the website makes it clear what you’re getting with every purchase, and they have found ways to get the power without the confusion. This is a welcome change from other servers that simply don’t allow for easy integration and limit utility by effectively locking options out for people who don’t understand how to best take advantage of them.

Features

Again, with so many options, it’s difficult to narrow down the features for any given thing. There are so many types of hosting that they provide. It’s probably easier to give ranges and ideas for comparison.Most of the hosting options have a number of plans within them that will start with solid, if basic, stats and then continue to rise exponentially while maintaining a slower price increase so that the higher your plan, the better the deal that you get. While this seems obvious, there are a number of companies that raise prices and statistics on an even ratio so that there is no particular advantage to larger plans.

So, for example, their basic Linux PHP hosting gives you one gig of storage for $4, so you’re paying $4 per gig. The next is $9, but comes with five gigs of storage, so your cost has now dropped to $1.80 a gig. At the top level, you’re paying $19 for 15 gigs of storage, dropping your price to $1.25. There is a progression of price there that’s good to see in a company with graduated pricing structures.

Regardless of what is being served, 3Essentials is using top-of-the-line hardware in order to provide it. Both of their data centers are staffed around the clock, have multiple backup systems, and some of the best fire suppression available on the market today. Accessing servers is quick, a testament to the equipment they’re using, and very impressive overall.

About the only drawback is that the servers generally are piecemeal, and it would be nice to see discounts for people who buy multiple types of plans.

Customer Support

3Essentials provides multiple ways for customers to address problems that they’re having. Not only can you submit a ticket to support, which was answered within an hour in my case, but you can also email, chat with a representative, and even call a physical phone number during certain hours. That’s if the Knowledgebase doesn’t have the answer. 3Essentials should be commended for its people, but perhaps the company should work on bulking out the online resources a little bit, perhaps developing a more powerful way to search.

Pricing

Again, this becomes very hard since there are dozens of different plans for everything from mail servers to Cloud VPSes. Pricing tends to be proportional to one another, so the basic Twitter account management server is $29, then $39 for the next level, and $59 for the top with proportional increases in services as a result.

Most of the standard individual servers cost on the $4, $9, $19 scale that was mentioned above, though when you start to get into managed servers and clouds you’re talking more along the lines of $40-$300 depending on the types of stats that you want. Regardless, almost every plan is a great price for what you’re getting and well worth the money.

The Good

This is one of the strongest and most diverse hosting services on the Internet

Provides great service for excellent prices on a number of products

The Bad

It would be nice to have packages that combine servers for better pricing

The Ugly

While the human customer service is top-notch, the company could do better with its online resources for support