2017 Arvixe Reviews: Expert Rating (2.5/5.0 Stars)
Now that a new year has started, I decided to look at a number of hosting sites so that I could come up with an idea of who was doing what. I stumbled upon Arvixe. I will be first to admit that I did not know a lot about this provider (couldn't recall if I knew it at all). So I decided to take a closer look at them. I was quite confused by the Arvixe reviews I was seeing. Some were glowing, yet others were not so forgiving.
To decide for myself, I looked at this service closely. I looked at what their service offer was. I checked what the users were saying about it. Before I came to an overall rating of the site I also took some time to look at what other experts in the field of hosting where saying. I think that it is a bit unfortunate, on the part of this provider, that I decided to do an Arvixe hosting review this early in the year. My standards are usually higher in the beginning of the year.
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Ratings
Arvixe Hosting Review
I know that many people believe that getting a 50% mark in a test is a pass. When the competition is so tough I do not think a 50% is any good at all. Would you accept to be operated on by a doctor who gets it right only 50% of the time or a pilot who successfully lands the aircraft only 50% of the time? I don't think so. So why would you want to have your website hosted by a site that gets a rating of 2.5 out of 5?
The main reason why I give Arvixe a rating that is quite low is because I'm not so happy with the average uptime of 99.48%. If you run a business this could lose you a lot of customers. I know that the industry standard is currently up 99.90%. Some users tell me that in 2015 the average uptime went down to as low as 83%. I think that these are not very good results.
Pros
While doing this review I spent a lot of time identifying the pros and cons of this service. Please do not get me wrong, Arvixe is not really as bad as you may think I am making it sound. It is just that in a place where competition is heating up, such as in the web hosting space, you cannot afford to start on the wrong foot. So the service does have quite a number of pros.
Lifetime Free Domain. Let me start by telling you that this is not the only domain that offers a free domain name when you sign up. This is a catch that is used by many sites to lure you in for the first time so that in subsequent years you have to pay for renewals. To the credit of Arvixe, it is one of the only few providers that does not do this. The free domain is for a lifetime without you having to pay for renewals every year.
Good Security. I certainly think that the security of your system is something that your hosting provider should take seriously. Arvixe has invested extensively in this area. They take a proactive approach to the security of your site.
Great Features. Of course, you would expect great features from a hosting service such as Arvixe. They are not cheap after all. Just check their cheapest plan, it comes with both unlimited storage and bandwidth. Add Yahoo, Google and Bing to these features and you will have an idea of what I am talking about. Check out how Google Marketing tools can aid your business on this video I saw on YouTube:
Cons
Poor Uptime. I have already indicated that I don't really care how good your other features are if I'm not guaranteed uptimes that come at industry standard.
Slow. In this day and age, slow should never be a word we use to describe a hosting service. When tested against the competition, Arvixe delivered speeds almost half of what the competitions were delivering. The success of a website depends on to a great deal on the speeds at which the pages load. Check out why loading speeds are important in this article.
Poor Customer Support. Okay, if you have a site that is prone to constant breakdowns, we would expect you to have a great customer support policy. This does not seem to be the case at Arvixe. Again do not get me wrong, the company does seem to have the right professionals to support customers. They just do not seem to be enough.
Arvixe Service Offering And Top Features
There are a few promises that Arvixe makes to the customer including the following.
Get A Free Domain For Life
The people at Arvixe show their love for the customer in a number of ways. One of them, of course, is the offer of a free domain for life. This is quite impressive especially if you consider that a lot of service providers use this a gimmick to get you to pay for renewals in subsequent years. If you get a domain from them, you will know that the domain name is yours 100%. However, if you want to move your domain from Arvixe, you can keep it but it goes back to regular pricing.
Features At A Glance
- Get a 10% lifetime discount
- Free domain for life
- Comes with website-building tools
- Options to host on Linux or Windows servers
Conclusion
I know a lot of Arvixe reviews are quite scathing including this one I have done but I will be the first to admit that I can see the people there have been listening to the complaints. There seems to be an effort now to turn things around. While we wait for them to get their whole house in order, we advise to forget Arvixe and just go with HostGator. Signing up with HostGator is a good step foward.