Comprehensive X10Hosting Review (2017 Edition)
11 years later, X10hosting, a New Hampshire-based web hosting company still gives users free web hosting. That doesn’t sound natural, yet it’s for this reason that they have massive popularity. And much as they offer paid plans too, the free hosting plan is what the majority seem to know about.
For absolutely no cost, they offer you among other things, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, a free domain, and MySQL databases. What’s more, it’s backed by cloud servers with SSD which ensures users enjoy a speedy, stable and flexible web hosting experience.
Have Your Blog Up & Running In 20 Minutes or Less!
My Free Step-By-Step Guide Will Get Your Blog Up & Running 20 Minutes Or Less
But being free, it also not without its challenges top amongst them being the state of customer support, reliability, and downtimes. But as usual, there are two sides to their services and we’ll find out about that in a few minutes.
Novices have plenty of reasons to try out X10 web hosting services. To start you off, you are provided with a free subdomain which may end with x10.mx or pcriot.com. And to add on that, you can expect to find industry standard hardware like the cPanel and quick install features for your WordPress. So read on to find out more.
Ratings
- Features 3.8/5.0
- Reliability 3.8/5.0
- Ease of Use 4.3/5.0
- Pricing 4.0/5.0
- Customer Support 3.8/5.0
X10hosting Free Hosting Review
Even for their free hosting services, the company still offers plenty of features to meet your hosting needs. And the same thing still applies to their paid hosting services as well. But as you will see later, the unlimited features offered in free hosting come with their own set of challenges and most users are somehow not happy about it.
Much effort has been put to ensure their services as reliable, right from using impeccable enterprise server hardware to the use of SSDs and so much more. Having clearly understood their core purpose, they have invested in the latest technology to ensure they provide excellent uptimes and fast load times for the websites they host. Still, this hasn’t them immune to occasional downtimes.
The web host utilizes the cPanel which helps users to easily run and maintain their site. And they have also not been left behind in offering great customer support systems either as you will also see later in this X10hosting review.
In terms of pricing, the company offers both yearly plans and monthly billings. The monthly plan is an offering that is not very common among web hosts. However, they make it clear that the longer your plan the more money you will save.
Pros
Free Hosting
While most companies offer the shared hosting at a relatively minimal fee, X10 hosting does it for free. Well, this may not be uncommon, however, they have gone a step further and offered a lot more unlimited resources than other web hosts doing the same offer. They have been generous with their unlimited bandwidth, storage, and other features. This extends to WordPress users as well and if you want to find out how you can install your WordPress site into a free X10Hosting account, the video below will help you out:
Plenty Of Features
With this web host’s services, the best features have been made available for the user. From the cPanel to the in- house control for beginners, managing a site has never been easier. WordPress and other scripts can also be installed with just a click which is a time-saving feature for those who don’t have the time to follow a guide. PHP, MySQL, email hosting, free website builders just to name but a few are some of the other features you can expect.
Good Performance
With private hardware cloud powered by OnApp running the site’s customized HTTP stack coupled with Varnish Cache and the PHP LiteSpeed SSPI, users can rest assured that the company’s servers are protected from hardware failures and software malfunctions. In fact, the Litespeed web server claims to provide 50% faster PHP execution.
Besides that, it’s compatible with Apache and can also drop in as a replacement for Apache. It also promises increased speed and more stability for the web host. Moreover, uptime is guaranteed and closely monitored with money guarantees for X10 premium users if the web host doesn’t maintain uptimes of 99.9% per month.
Pricing
Unlike most of the competition where users are expected to lock down long periods in order to benefit from low prices, this company allows monthly billing with reasonable prices to boot. What’s more, they do not increase prices after a year with them. And for their top tier plans, they offer you domain registration at pretty competitive prices.
Having said that, they also have these longer plans that save you more money: the annual, biennial and triennial plans. In the case of the biennial and triennial plans, you will receive a free domain registration, a dedicated IP address, and SSL certificate all lasting you the lifetime of the package.
Customer Support
Despite offering free web hosting services, X10hosting has one of the best customer support systems in place. This starts from the written as well as video tutorials to tools and tips that help you maneuver through any hurdle. You are also set to receive updates plus support emails and sometimes they will make use of the user communities to offer advice and quick technical assistance. A community of users with rich experience in using their services will also be at the ready to help you out.
Cons
No Money Back Guarantee
While most companies allow potential users a trial period that can last between 30 -90 days with a money back guarantee, the company offers no such trial period. Money once paid for the premium web hosting services is nonrefundable. The reason given is the site is trying to combat host hoppers. Instead, they advise you try their free hosting to see if their services fit your needs.
Limits To Unlimited Features
Free hosting by the company includes the latest versions of PHP and MySQL database plus unlimited bandwidth, storage, among other features. But while their paid plans do live up to their promise of providing unlimited resources, the same cannot be said of their promise to free hosting users.
You can only use up to 50,000 inodes and there is a hard limit of 1GB for photo and videos even with unmetered storage. Although it is possible to ask for the inodes limit to be lifted, the web host is reluctant to do so because of the low cost of sign up and the huge potential for abuse.
So most users are nowadays cynical about such promises. However, this issue puts a dent in the credibility of the web host even though they make it clear that they provide space for the website, not for distribution or sharing or cloud storage of your files.
Abuse Of Free Hosting Service
Unfortunately, as with any free hosting service, the issue of abuse always comes up. Not too long ago, 000 web host’s free hosting services come under criticism after passwords were leaked from their servers. The range of abuse varies usually from spam to phishing to copyright infringement and hack not to mention viruses. X10 has not escaped this bad phenomenon either. They suffer many cases of abuse that have seen cases of blacklisting go on the rise.
Top Features of X10hosting
Features Rich
X10hosting utilizes the cPanel which remains one of the most popular softwares across the globe. It comes with outstanding features that make it easy for you to carry out administrative tasks on your websites like uploading and editing files easily, configuring a domain, and managing MySQL databases.
Also, they offer beginners the option of an in-house developed control panel, the X10hosting basic, which is easier to use for anyone starting out a website.
In addition, the company’s servers provide over 300 1-click installers to simply your software set-up process. So users who are not tech-savvy will still able to install WordPress, Joomla and other scripts without needing the help of an admin.
Performance
As we saw earlier in our X10hosting com review, the company boasts of the best enterprise server hardware providing its users with fast and reliable speed. Furthermore, their cloud software is amongst the leading in the industry. You can as well expect premium networks which offer optimized web hosting running on Apache 2.4 and the latest versions of Cloudlinux 6.
By separating users properly on the server and defining the resource limits very clearly, the web host has succeeded in ensuring their servers provide excellent response times for the web host users (almost as good as what you would expect from a paid host). For X10 premium users, servers are fitted with dual 6-core Xeon processors with 32 GB RAM to optimize the speeds and performance.
99.99% uptime guarantee is an industry standard and this company sticks to it. X10 premium users get a guarantee for the 99.9% server uptime and money back if this is not met.
Customers Support System
X10 offers a website builder for users starting out. As most users are not developers, instances of clients encountering problems are rife. But the site has mitigated that by incorporating a forum based support system that links the user with their community of webmasters. Clients on X10premium and Prime are also offered upgrades that allow them to get the immediate attention of the full-time support team. All these is in addition to the many written as well as video tutorials that will help figure things out with ease.
Conclusion
Overall, X10 web hosting services are ideal for both business and personal websites looking to start out on a budget. The disk space is dependent on how many adverts or other multimedia content you decide to put up on your page and this also includes customized adverts. For those who put up adverts, they also provide a banner.
The load times for the site are pretty impeccable even for the free hosting service although downtimes do occur occasionally lasting an average of 20 - 30minutes. However, as expected there is a marked improvement in performance for the X10 premium services.
But with little to no technical support, occasional poor performance, limitations and the other downsides we saw in our X10hosting review, cheap web hosting service from another host might be better. HostGator is an alternative you will never go wrong with. And it’s not just the cheap web hosting you will get from them but also great hosting performance. For them, the fundamental rule of web hosting has been emphasized: reliable and fast services.
Have Your Blog Up & Running In 20 Minutes or Less!
Get My Free Step-By-Step Guide Will Get Your Blog Up & Running 20 Minutes Or Less