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UltraHost Overview
What becomes immediately apparent is that inexpensiveness is UltraHost’s selling point, which is not a terrible thing to be at all. The folks at UltraHost make it easy to see how much the company charges per plan, don’t try to confuse people with extensive and complex options and overall are transparent about the services offered.
Ease of Use
In reality, this should be the major selling point, since UltraHost goes out of its way to make it very, very simple to interact with a hosting account. It can be accessed through the Web with a very intuitive interface that is pretty close to most cPanel layouts that people have become accustomed to, but it also gives a number of other options. Obviously FTP is also available, but more than that, a customer can also use VPN to transfer through an encrypted source if the data is particularly sensitive.
The introduction of SAMBA as a transfer method is pretty unique for a Web hosting company. With this system, a folder to represent the remote server is created on the user’s system, and the user can simply drag and drop their files into that folder for instant sync. While this is used pretty extensively for remote storage like Dropbox and Google Drive, the idea of applying it to Web hosting is both new and interesting.
Finally, UltraHost also uses RSYNC backup so that only files that have been changed are automatically updated every time. It’s fast, efficient, and should be used much more often than it actually is.
Features
Due to the prices, features are a bit thin on the ground as far as variety goes. However, if what is required is a simple website with very little in the way of bells and whistles, it should more than cover most people’s needs.
The most basic plan includes 200 MB of disk space, two GB of bandwidth, five mailboxes, 1 mailing list, three subdomains, three FTP accounts, and one MySQL database. It’s basically in line with the price, and a few additional benefits like automatic backup cost more, but it’s about what a person ought to expect.
All of that goes up to being unlimited with the highest plan, with the small print caveat that if someone uses more than 12 GB of space or 36 GB of bandwidth a month of their “unlimited” stuff, they could be hit with an overuse fee at the company’s discretion. It’s a bit of a bait and switch that feels uncomfortably dishonest, especially since the limitation itself is perfectly reasonable. Most users will not run into these, but it’s disturbing.
Customer Support
There’s nothing specifically wrong with UltraHost’s customer service other than that it further shows what a small company they are. The customer has an option of filling out an online form or calling a non-toll free number in Tacoma if there are any problems. There is no indication of what service hours are, but it took a while for people to return a submitted ticket. The people themselves are good at what they do and seem to know their work very well, but the difficulty in making contact and lack of easy access to people makes one worry if they should need immediate support in an emergency.
Pricing
Again, pricing is really what UltraHost wants to highlight as their unique marketing point, and they have succeeded. Their basic plan is either $10 quarterly or $30 annually and gives a pretty decent list of features for such a low price. Their mid level plan, which is often the best deal, is $15 quarterly and $50 annually, though it doesn’t seem to be the best in this case.
Strangely, the plan that appears to give customers the most value for their money is the UltraExtreme Plan. Despite the silly name, the fact that they provide unlimited mailboxes, mailing lists, subdomains, FTP accounts, and MySQL databases for only $30 quarterly or $100 annually is pretty spectacular. Even if their “unlimited” space and bandwidth are not actually unlimited, they are pretty large for most small business websites.
The thing to understand is that this is not robust hosting — it’s introductory hosting. It’s for people who are starting a business on a shoestring budget or want to make a website for personal reasons. For these prices, this is an appropriate number of features.
The Good
This is a great hosting company to go with if you have very simple needs
Pricing structure seems to adequately represent the service features
The Bad
UltraHost is tiny, which can have a major impact on a company working with them
And The Ugly
None