Are you a small-scale entrepreneur that is looking for a good web hosting service for your website?
If this is the case, you might have found yourself considering signing up for BigRock, one of the major web hosting services in the world.
In the world of web hosting, many companies have set niches that they stick to, and guides their marketing strategy and growth vision.
Regardless of whether they serve smaller entrepreneurs, artists, or bloggers, it makes their marketing efforts easier once they know who to serve, and it will also help you know the best add-ons and plugins that you can use from them.
With this in mind, it can be a surprise to see BigRock manage to pull off their set approach in a brilliant way.
Throughout its existence, it aims to help all sorts of people to build beautiful websites, even without skipping the advertising or plugins.
But is it the best web hosting service to pick for your needs? Read our BigRock review to find out.
Every company in existence has its own unique trademarks, and they all call for specified solutions that fit their size, individual industries they are in, the type of staff they have, and the customers they deal with, and it is no different for this hosting service.
The provider is a web hosting service that is based in India with their communication address being in the United Arab Emirates, and it gives you a chance to host your website at affordable prices.
The aim of the company is to offer both reseller and shared hosting basic features at a low price.
Their features might come from the fact that the platform is a part of the EIG (Endurance International Group), which is an organization that seeks to provide e-commerce, web hosting, and web tools to users around the world.
There are some major features you will find in all hosting packages, which we will elaborate below.
1. Money-back guarantee
The platform offers a 30-day money back guarantee, which is 100% risk-free. This applies to all plans, including VPS hosting; which is something you might notice most web hosting services do not do.
2. App support and easy installation
Most of the packages available will also include a variety of applications, as well as control panels that permit easier installation processes. This is a plus even if you do not have significant knowledge on website development.
In addition, these apps will range from file managers that are simple to use, all the way to resource analysis tools that help you in checking the growth of your website.
These are available for both VPS and Cloud hosting plans, although you will need to purchase them separately. You should keep the fee for these in your budget, as businesses are expected to have them.
Note that the support team will install them for you, which is quite fortunate, as you will not need to struggle on your own to install them.
4. Redundancy
Regarding VPS and Cloud hosting, there is plenty of redundancy.
This means that the platform itself will store numerous copies of data on your website in separate devices, which ensures that the risks of loss are nearly zero.
5. Speed and security
Factoring in the reliability of a web hosting service is very important, as this will determine whether it is safe for your visitors as well.
Speed features
If you happen to be a geek, you will be quite interested when it comes to the speed features that are available with certain plans, which are Varnish (a caching technology), Solid State Drives (SSDs), and mod_pagespeed.
However, note that the shared hosting tiers will use PHP 5.2-5.4 (for extra reference, PHP refers to the programming language that many Content management services are written in, such as Joomla and Drupal).
This will be a disadvantage if you are running some websites though or web hosting, as the minimum PHP to run in this case is 7.
SiteLock
This is a third-party application that BigRock plans include for free, and provides CDN (Content Delivery Network that speeds up the loading time of your site), as well as malware scanning.
The unfortunate thing is that it is limited. In fact, the platform states that the SSL-enabled websites are incompatible with the CDN and Basic Firewall you get, even though the scans still work.
This is a major deal because all sites must have an SSL certificate.
Hosting and server security
The platform outlines their security measures, which include software updates, DDOS migration, security patches, and server firewalls.
6. Cpanel
Bigrock provide Cpanel as a control panel where you can easily manage many things on your website.
7. Domain name registry
There is also domain name registration services offered on the platform, due to the fact that they have accreditation from the ICANN. Aside from this, they also have:
Whois lookup
Domain transfers
Transfers of bulk domains
8. Migration Service
Bigrock provide migration service but this is not useful. Because Bigrock provide migration service only on VPS & Dedicated servers.
9. You can install WordPress by two methods
1. Softaculous –
This uses the CRM app of Softaculous to install your WordPress hosting application, and you can do it in a few minutes.
After buying a web hosting package, you receive an email that contains all your relevant details like the login panel, FTP, and Name servers, which you will then use when installing WordPress on your cPanel.
2. Manually –
This will require the use of the WordPress app (the desktop version). It is a longer process, but worth using once in a while to understand how it works.
You first get the app, then select the MySQL wizard to make a new database.
Create the password and username you want to use, and note down the details that you will get afterwards – you will need them to finish the installation process.
You will then go to your domain and install WP in your website through the cPanel. If you want extra information on the process a guide is written here that explains it quite clearly.
10. Billing and payment
The good news is the acceptance of a wide range of payment options, as they take wire transfers, PayPal, and all major credit cards such as MasterCard and Visa.
You can even set the time frame you want to pay for, with the options of 1, 5, 10, 3 or 2 years. This is quite unique even among other web hosting platforms, since it is very hard to find a service that allows you to pay for more than 3 years up front.
The main reason a longer period might be better is because the introduction rates (the rates you get when you are first paying your subscription) only apply to the first-time payment period.
Afterwards, the prices will go up to ‘regular’ rates.
11. Site building
They have plenty of plugins that you can use for your site, and the ease of the process will allow you to build your website in minutes.
If you want to customize your site, they even have a stock library that features more than 85,000 images, and there are extra tools to help connect with your customers – social media integration, e-commerce integration, SEO tools, and blogging functionality.
If you happen to use CMS, themes will be important to your website. There is a wide variety here, as the platform offers more than 1000 plugins, themes and logos that you can purchase.
Note that the products are single-use, and can only work for a single domain name at any time.
12. Uptime guarantee
In this BigRock review, we did note that the platform has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is the standard for any low-cost website host.
Let’s get into the details.
Month & Year
Server Uptime
Server Response Time
Result
February 2020
99.97%
873 ms
Excellent
January 2020
99.96%
846 ms
Excellent
December 2019
99.99%
992 ms
Excellent
November 2019
99.79%
887 ms
Not Bad
October 2019
99.99%
919 ms
Excellent
September 2019
99.97%
878 ms
Excellent
August 2019
99.97%
846 ms
Excellent
July 2019
100%
956 ms
Excellent
June 2019
99.86%
991 ms
Ok
May 2019
99.97%
874 ms
Excellent
April 2019
99.99%
813 ms
Excellent
March 2019
99.91%
871 ms
Good
This means that when you host a site on their platform, your total downtime every month could be about 44 minutes.
If this is something that will cost you plenty of money in losses, then it is better for you to move to a more reliable and expensive host.
In case you come across any issue while hosting your website, BigRock has a knowledgebase that is comprehensive enough and fully accessible, and answers all the common questions you may have or issues you are experiencing.
There is a good thing about them: they have both live chat and a phone line, which you can use to talk to the support team on a 24/7 basis.
The only thing you need to remember is that all companies under EIG share the same support staff, which is quite different from a company that has its own separate, in-house staff.
Resources and knowledgebase
There is a comprehensive knowledgebase, as we mentioned earlier, and it also has a few tutorials on hosting. The articles themselves are written quite well, even though the drawback is the challenges in navigation.
4 BigRock Drawbacks, Cons or Disadvantages
BigRock is one of the biggest domain hosting sites in India but is not as popular in the west.
It has a solid general review score, but ranks lower than a lot of the top tier industry leaders, especially in more western markets.
Let’s have a little look at why this is.
1. No Free Automatic Backups
Unlike its competitors, BigRock does not offer free automatic backup of the websites that it hosts. This is an issue for a lot of reasons.
Primarily, if you lose your site somehow, be it human error or something else, then you’re all out of luck.
This makes using the site for hosting a risky business, but that is offset by the low prices that it offers.
2. Low Accessibility to Dedicated Servers
One of the reasons the BigRock has struggled so much in the broader global market is because of the dedicated servers for select regions.
While you can still get your hands on shared servers, they’re not for everyone, and those seeking a more intense and precise option are going to be unable to do so with this host.
3. Very Poor Customer Support
As with anything, the quality of the customer support you get is going to differ on a case by case basis. However, there is a consensus that the customer service offered by BigRock leaves a lot to be desired.
There tends to be a lot of customers complaining about it, which is definitely not what you want, especially from something that exists in the technical space, where you often need problems resolved quickly and efficiently.
4. Basic Plans Lack Features
The price of the basic plans offered by BigRock is fairly small, and the features you get with those plans reflect that.
Things like website amount and storage data are small when compared to other sites, which may hinder the growth of certain sites.
The overall impression we get in this BigRock review is that the platform seems to be a highly flexible option, which works well in accommodating many groups of users.
As far as their services go, they are not lacking in many ways – however, they lack dedicated servers for international customers, which is quite disappointing.
Their main attraction is their shared hosting services, and you can get it in both Windows and Linux platforms. Both tiers do not seem to have many differences with the tiers available.
There are also fewer plugins than you would expect in other web hosting service, but the essential ones are all available.
There are 5 main varieties of hosting that this service offers:
Cloud hosting
Shared hosting
Reseller hosting
Specialized hosting
VPS hosting
Bigrock Hosting Plans
Here are some services that are available in the BigRock.in site:
Cloud for Business
One-page site builder (BigRock instant)
Dedicated server hosting
Numerous people prefer the Linux system as an option compared to Windows. This is mainly due to 2 reasons – Linux is an open-source system making it cheaper to operate, it is great at handling a wider variety of tasks.
However, you might want to consider Windows if you need a stack that uses Microsoft as its basis, for instance the Plesk control panel.
When considering the storage space and bandwidth, it is unlimited for both Linux and Windows installations.
However, this is not applicable at all times, because there will be limits imposed on your website when you exceed certain limits, or you will receive prompts that you need to upgrade to a higher tier (for instance, move to VPS hosting from shared hosting).
Regarding Linux hosting, there is the use of the cPanel control panel, while Windows uses Plesk, which are both quite good.
The basic plan will only allow you to host one website, but the higher tiers will allow for unlimited domain use. They will also give you:
Email hosting
Free migrations of websites
One-click installs
Shared hosting
One thing to note in this BigRock review is that the platform is among the few shared hosting platforms that gives you a choice of both Windows and Linux.
This is because many hosts will only offer Linux due to its open source nature and its popularity. Linux also supports the most popular content management systems, such as WordPress.
This can work for you in many cases, except if your site is built in .NET or ASP – in that case, Windows hosting is essential.
While the Windows pricing plans are more expensive than the Linux ones (which is a normal occurrence), the features are almost identical on both operating systems.
There are 4 varieties of the shared hosting plan, and most of these plans have the following features:
Unlimited email support, except in the Starter plan (200 email addresses)
Unlimited space in all of them, except the Starter plan (10 GB)
Unlimited transfers (bandwidth)
Plesk (Windows) or cPanel (Linux) control panels
Note that the word ‘Unlimited’ in these cases means that the feature is boundless, unless abuse happens.
If you exceed the limits of a certain period, the platform will charge you a penalty or prompt you to pay for a higher tier if the servers are suffering from overload.
The control panel of cPanel comes with Softaculous, which is a highly popular application that makes it easy to install a wide variety of open source applications in a few clicks, such as Joomla and WordPress.
Specialized hosting
You can get CMS, WordPress, and e-commerce in the specialized hosting category, and the pricing tiers are identical to those of the shared hosting.
Reseller hosting
Similar to the shared hosting packages, BigRock will give you reseller hosting packages for both operating systems.
All the plans available will allow you to sell hosting services to other customers, while still using BigRock services and servers and get a share of the profit. This means that you do not need reseller hosting unless you are beginning a hosting business.
There are 4 pricing tiers you will get for reseller hosting each with different features, which are:
Unlimited cPanel/Plesk control panel accounts
Unlimited FTP, email accounts and domains
Free WHMCS billing system, with the exception of the Essential plan
Unlimited MS-SQL and MySQL databases
Cloud hosting
This is more reliable and powerful compared to shared hosting, although this does not make it more expensive compared to VPS hosting.
You will get your own resources from a cloud server that are dedicated to your website, unlike shared hosting that demands sharing of these resources with other sites or users.
Some plans you will get here indicate ‘unlimited’ bandwidth, but the truth is that the resources directed to your site will likely be curbed by the server if the traffic levels to your website are quite heavy.
This makes cloud hosting to be a better option for those that operate smaller sites that have lower traffic levels.
The hosting package here gets a major boost from a caching technology, Varnish, which allows your site to function without lagging or slowing down.
VPS hosting
There are four pricing options you can get for VPS hosting, and all of them are quite affordable.
All the plans have a specified amount of bandwidth and disk space that you can use every month, and it is quite easy to upgrade your package when you see that your site is growing and experiencing high levels of traffic.
It is important to note something about the VPS packages though – you can get cPanel benefits, but it will come at an added cost.
There are some important features of VPS hosting to note:
Full root access
Four distributions of Linux – Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora and Debian
Instant provisioning
High speed SSDs (Solid State Drives)
Automatic failover
WHMCS
Access to VNC
Semi-management of services- such as assistance with optimization of servers, and firewall set up
Plesk or cPanel
Protection for DDoS
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine)
Other services
WordPress hosting
The benefits of getting a WordPress plan on BigRock are:
One-click installation of WordPress on your cPanel interface
Unlimited disk space, emails and domains
A money-back guarantee of 30 days
99.9% uptime with technical support on a 24/7 basis
There are 4 plans under the WordPress hosting plan, which are:
Starter
Advanced
Business
Pro
Website allocation
One
One
Three
Unlimited
Space
10 GB
Unmetered
Unmetered
Unmetered
Transfers
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Email sending limits
200
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Starting fee (per month)
$1.59
$3.49
$5.39
$7.39
The benefits of WordPress hosting are numerous, as it is very easy to use and popular with both existing and new users.
This builds on the benefits of using BigRock itself, as the platform is quite easy to navigate and use, as well as economical and working well for budget users.
Useful Facts about the Pricing
Before finding out about the pricing, it is important to note that BigRock has two websites that handle different services, which is dependent on where you operate from.
For international clients, the website to use is BigRock.com, and their prices are in US Dollars.
If your business or blog has high traffic levels from outside India, or if you are outside India yourself, then you will want to use the BigRock.com website.
For customers in India or have most of their web traffic coming from India, the site to use is BigRock.in, and the prices are in Indian Rupees.
It will also offer more services that you will lack in the BigRock.com site, such as dedicated server hosting.
Their Windows hosting services range from $2.49 to $12.49. On the other hand, the pricing you will get for the WordPress and Linux hosting services are based in 4 pricing tiers:
Starter – monthly fee is $1.59, hosts 1 website
Advanced – monthly fee is $3.49, hosts 1 website
Business – monthly fee is $5.39, hosts 3 websites
Pro – monthly fee is $8.59, hosts unlimited websites
The choice you will make will depend on the numbers of websites and email accounts you want, as well as the disk space size.
Here is a summary table explaining the pricing structures:
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