HostPapa Review

Company: HostPapa

Background: Founded in 2006 by Jamie Opalchuk, HostPapa, an Ontario-based web hosting company, provides small businesses, web designers, and resellers with a number of web solutions. Those solutions include shared web hosting,  virtual private server (VPS) hosting plans for small businesses, a drag-and-drop website builder, and a powerful multi-site reseller option for designers and IT firms.

Starting Price: $3.95/mo

Currency: USD

Visit Online: https://www.hostpapa.com

Review Summary & Ratings

4

HostPapa states that the goal is to give every customer the full-featured hosting packages they are looking for, backed by excellent customer service. HostPapa was named 27th Annual PROFIT 500 Ranking of Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2015.

My Experience with HostPapa

Personally, I had some good experience with HostPapa in 2010 – I was helping a non-profit organization and setup a site on HostPapa. Their server was always up and running and most importantly for a non-profit, the hosting costs with Papa was ultra-cheap. That was 10 years ago. I left HostPapa after my charity project ended and never look back… until recently.

In December 2016, I did an interview with the company founder, Jamie Opalchuk. It was a fruitful session. Mr. Jamie was very helpful, very knowledgeable, and transparent with his company operations. The company was under some negative PR attack and some people left a false claim on the company in some popular forums. And I was able to prove them wrong after did my own investigation.

After the interview, I decided that I wanted to learn more about HostPapa again. So I got an account (Business Pro) at HostPapa and setup a new test site on. After some extensive research of their service and testings –  I was surprise to find out that HostPapa shared hosting are quite affordable (see my cheap hosting guide for comparison) at signup and their performance is above average.

In all honesty, I wouldn't and say HostPapa is the best in everything. They are not. But in case you were considering a Canadian web host or a shared hosting provider that doesn't break your wallet – I think they are worth checking upon.

In this HostPapa review…

In this review, I am going to share my personal experience with the Papa, as well as server test results I collected throughout the years. Hopefully by bringing you to the backstage and showing you “behind the scenes” actions, you can make a better decision on where to host your website.

We received some feedback from both company CEO, Jamie Opalchuk as well as company Marketing Director, Dave Price, after this review is published – part of the responses from the company is published under “HostPapa Plans and Pricing”.

I will also share a special deal for WHSR visitors  – you'll get free $36 credit on all HostPapa shared plans with this deal.

Pros

• Great value for money
• Good server performance
• Eco-friendly – Green hosting service 
• Responsive live chat support
• Huge room for expansion and upgrades

Cons

• Expensive renewal fees
• Limited server locations

Pros: What I Like About HostPapa Hosting

1. Cheap, multi-domain shared hosting plan

There are many things that I like about HostPapa’s shared hosting plans. I find that they offer a strong value proposition, actually giving you your money’s worth. For example, The Starter plan kicks in at just $2.95 a month (with our discount link) and allows you to host one website. That’s less than what a cuppa at Starbucks would set you back.

Resources allocated are decent as well. You get 100GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and a free domain name. You also get 100 email accounts, access to over 200 free apps, and the use of the starter version of an excellent drag-and-drop website builder – all with the excellent speed and security of a good host.

HostPapa Hosting Price vs Others

2. Good server performance

FYI – WHSR backs all our reviews with data. We operate test sites on all hosts, conduct speed tests using independent tools, and have established a sister site to track host performance. You can see HostPapa's latest server performance on this page.

HostPapa wasn't always great in the past. There was a time when my test site goes down very often and I reduced their star rating to just 3 stars. In mid-2017, there was some frequent short outages for my test site – you can see one of the records below where their uptime score is below 99.8% for one whole month.

The situation has improved a lot since then. With average server uptime in excess of 99.9%, HostPapa can be considered as being in the upper range of stable hosts.

Past Record of HostPapa Uptime

October / November 2018: 100%

June / July 2018: 100%

May 2018: 100%

June 2017: 99.75%

Do take note that HostPapa does have a solid service level agreement (SLA) in place and guarantees 99.9% uptime to all of their shared hosting users.

3. Green hosting service that does not break your wallet

The fact that environmental sustainability and service affordability goes hand in hand with HostPapa is something remarkable. Hostpapa is one of the cheapest green hosting services available in the market. HostPapa's Business plan costs $3.95/mo (with our discount link) which is pretty good compared to similar hosting plans from GreenGeeks and HostGator at $4.95/mo and $3.95/mo.

How does HostPapa “green” hosting work?

In case you’re wondering – HostPapa has taken the initiative of going green since 2006 by buying renewable energy to power its servers and offices.

After an energy audit by a third-party provider (Green-e.org, for example) to calculate HostPapa’s electrical energy consumption from traditional sources, they purchased “green energy tags” from a certified clean energy supplier.

That supplier calculates the total energy consumption of HostPapa operations – from servers to office equipment – then uses their suppliers of green energy to pump in 100% in equivalent energy back into the power grid.

This effectively cuts down on the carbon dioxide-producing (CO2) energy that we normally would consume from non-green energy sources.

Learn more about how green hosting works in Timothy's article.

4. Responsive Live Chat Support

I spoke a few times with HostPapa live chat support staff in the past and was very happy with their performance. My inquiries were responded to very quickly and the support staff was all very helpful. Refer to the image below for my recent chat transcript where I named myself “J”.

Also worth mentioning – HostPapa is Better Business Bureau accredited since 13/8/2010 and A+ rated (at the time of writing).

My Chat Record with HostPapa Support #1 (May 30th, 2017)

My Chat Record with HostPapa Support #2 (June 4th, 2018)

5. Huge room for expansion and upgrades

I like the fact that there are five VPS and reseller hosting plans to choose from. Having this breadth of options to upgrade and expand your hosting server is important.

Cons: What's Not Great with HostPapa?

1. Expensive renewal fees

Budget hosting companies often pull down their signup price to attract new customers. The same goes with HostPapa – you will have to pay a much higher rate – $9.99/$14.99/$23.99/mo for Starter, Business, and Business Pro upon renewal of your service contract.

2. Limited server locations

Unlike many major hosting companies which give their customers a strategic choice of data center locations, HostPapa has clustered theirs within North America and Canada. Although this does give them good control over the quality of data centers they work with, it doesn’t help their customers who want to target web traffic from other regions.

The result is a higher latency for visitors of those websites since they have to be routed over to North America.

HostPapa Hosting Plans & Pricing

For only $2.95/mo, HostPapa users get 100GB disk storage space, unlimited bandwidth, and 100 email accounts as well as one-click application installation support, the latest PHP and MySQL versions, basic SSL support, and more.

That’s pretty much at the top end of the line of what other shared hosting providers are offering at this price range of plans.

Message from Dave Price, HostPapa Marketing Director

We are not the same company we were a couple years ago. The infrastructure is upgraded/enhanced for better performance, the support channels are even stronger, we offer 30 minute free private sessions to help customers on a topic they want help with in addition to the 24/7 support in 4 languages via chat, ticket, and phone, plus we now have incredible VPS offerings, etc.

You can find out more about HostPapa hosting plans in tables below, or simply visit HostPapa online at https://www.hostpapa.com/ for official information.

HostPapa Shared Hosting Plans

HostPapa VPS Hosting* Plans

* Note: It's important to note that HostPapa is offering managed VPS hosting at an additional cost of $21.99/mo. The cost is optional. Meaning that if you want HostPapa to take care of your server issues such as security audit, network issues, software upgrades, migration, and firewall setup, you need to pay extra. Otherwise, you have to choose the self-managed option. 

**VPS signup price is based on 36-month term and renew at the same price.

HostPapa FAQs

Verdict: Should You Go with HostPapa Hosting?

Do I recommend HostPapa? Yes. I especially like their feature-rich plans and low signup prices.

But is HostPapa the best web host in market? I would probably say no. The expensive renewal prices push them out of budget shared hosting and will likely be a strain on the bottom line of many smaller websites..

If for some reason you want your website to be hosted in the U.S. or Canada, then HostPapa is definitely one of the best choices.

HostPapa Discounted Signup Price vs Renewal Price

This special discount is applicable to all shared hosting plans – Starter, Business, and Business Pro. The table below shows the prices before and after discount for 3 years subscription.