If you are searching for a virtual server that has both tech-heavy advantages and flexibility in hosting options, then you will likely get it as our InterServer review will show.
The host as a variety of promises under its belt – affordable pricing, high-end security features.
Top level performance, and ease of use.
You might wonder whether it actually lives up to these claims, but it does – in surprising ways, in fact.
There are endless benefits of VPS hosting packages, as they give plenty of RAM/memory, computing resources, and storage for physical servers.
They also surpass the limitations that shared hosting packages have, and they reduce the financial burden of having a dedicated server.
InterServer brings these benefits to light, thanks to their server ‘slice’ model – which we will look into in more detail below.
Contents In Page
InterServer Dec 2022 Deals & Coupons
100% Off On All Hosting Plans at InterServer
Get Web Hosting at Just $0.01 With Interserver – Almost Free
Pay Only $0.01 For Dedicated Server Hosting
Pay Only $0.01 For VPS Hosting
⪼ View All 300+ Deals & Coupons
What is InterServer?
The history of the company goes back to 1999, when it was founded by John Quaglieri and Michael Lavrik, and its headquarters are in New Jersey.
Its initial goal was to be a virtual hosting account reseller, but it has grown past that goal in many ways – and now offers a variety of hosting services.
In addition, it now operates two datacenters in New Jersey, and is now expanding to other locations, such as Los Angeles.
The hosting platform is quite popular among users due to their budget-friendly approach, as well as their specializations. These include co-location hosting solutions, along with dedicated servers, VPS, and shared hosting.
The company also ensures these things through their policy of doing everything in-house, including their customer support and data center. They also offer both Linux and Windows hosting, as well as WordPress plans.
InterServer Review By Hosting Experts & Users
[wp-review]
Screenshot of some customers Reviews
More Reviews available at bottom of this article
Top 5 Competitors Reviews
➩ HostGator Review
➩ SiteGround Review
➩ BlueHost Review
➩ A2 Hosting Review
➩ Inmotion Hosting Review
14 InterServer Pros or Advantages
Every hosting package has the following aspects – advanced levels of security, professional customer support, an intuitive control panel, great performance and many more features.
1. Infrastructure
One thing that is quite impressive about the platform is the vast network of servers that it has.
It uses three backbone providers for I IP services:
- NTT Communications – covers Asia
- Zayo – covers mainly the East coast of the US
- Cogent – highly favors European nodes
In addition to this, there is much favoring of switching and high-end routing equipment, all sourced from Riverstone, Cisco and Extreme Networks, and a highly intelligent BGPv4 router protocol.
2. Virtuozzo 7
This is a new virtual platform that is unique to the platform, which brings performance boosts for Linux server VPS plans in particular. Some of the advantages it offers include:
- Offers you a choice of running solid state drives (SSDs) that have a current cost of $3 per slice
- Allows you to operate several Linux flavors
- Thanks to virtual network computing (VNC), it is possible to connect to your Linux command line interface (CLI) or your Windows desktop
3. SitePad website builder
InterServer is a partner of Drupal hosting services, but they also have some WordPress installation services. There are some elements that we find both good and bad in their site builder though, and we will give a breakdown of these elements:
-
Dashboard
The dashboard that InterServer uses is just above the cPanel dashboard, while the domains dashboard is on a separate page.
This sounds good because you can separate the three, but it is unfortunately confusing for many users at first, especially if you are new.
However, not all aspects of it are bad though, as there are some neat benefits you can access from it. For instance, you can use it to:
- Write blog posts
- Adding pages to your site
- Upload media
- Change themes
-
Themes on the site
Thanks to the extensive selection of more than 300 themes, the SitePad builder can help you to create a professional site within a few minutes.
Other than that, you will need some additional time to further customize your site, but the process is not too difficult.
-
Content
Addition of content to your website using the SitePad builder is quite easy, even comparing it to dragging widgets or adding text to where you want your content to be.
At the end of the day, this site builder is quite impressive, slick and professional, even though it does not get as much coverage or publicity.
As expected from any professional-style site builder, you can choose among hundreds of themes, and adding text pages and other content is very easy.
4. Reseller hosting and affiliate programs
There are two methods of making money on the platform as time goes on – reseller hosting and affiliate programs.
If you want to join up with any of these programs, the platform will give you access to your own InterServer marketing assistant, as well as plenty of marketing materials.
Reseller programs
If you want to join the platform in order to create a reselling hosting service, you are a good candidate for their plans.
However, note that you will have to know the nitty-gritty aspects when it comes to creating and managing a hosting service before you join the program.
Affiliate program
The company’s program is very attractive, and will work well when you want to boost your financial reserves through a very simple way: marketing the platform to other potential clients.
In fact, for every customer who signs up on the platform using your link, you will get $100, in addition to the platform creating a free landing page for you, which will handle all referrals.
You can even negotiate for higher commissions if your site is very popular.
5. Backup
All shared hosting plans will come with weekly backups for free (as compared to many hosting platforms that do daily backups), as the platform uses OpenStack that creates redundancy on their systems.
We also notice that they keep 3 copies of every backup for 60 days.
When it comes to restores, these are entirely free, and you can do them from your control panel. Another method is to initiate manual backups, or restoration from Plesk (for Windows servers) or cPanel (for Linux servers).
For WordPress hosting, it is possible to add backups through using a free plugin, such as BackWPUp.
For dedicated servers and VPS hosting plans, you will need to take care of your own backups. However, the company still provides a wide range of support articles that are comprehensive enough for the job, so you do not need to worry.
6. Behind the scenes look
The company makes it very easy for you to keep tabs on the parts of your website that the public cannot access. This comes in form of the following features:
-
Hosting dashboard
When you log into the dashboard of the platform, it is possible to see all your servers and plans in a centralized place – which includes dedicated servers, VPS, cloud, and shared hosting plans.
From this area, it is possible to monitor any notifications that relate to your account directly.
From here it is also easy to update your billing information quickly, register new domains or transfer those you currently own, reset your password, make changes to the web hosting plan that you use, and update your personal information.
-
Domains list
You can also see the domains you have bought from InterServer, although this is the only thing you see. Unfortunately, it will not show you the hosting plan that the domain is associated with, even if InterServer hosts it.
7. Control panel of cPanel
There are a variety of control panels the platform offers, depending on the hosting package you use:
- VPS hosting uses the Bread Basket proprietary panel
- Linux and shared hosting use cPanel
- Windows hosting uses Plesk
8. Free Migration Service
At Interserver you will get free website migration. If your website or Blog hosted on another hosting server just contact them they will transfer it to Interserver for free of cost.
Hurry! Get Free 3 Months Hosting On InterServer Hosting
9. Installation of scripts
If you want to install a variety of scripts, the process is very easy, and this is all due to Softaculous, with the end aim of increasing the functionality of your website and merging with different platforms.
It will allow installation of Magento, WordPress and SMF, and the platform has detailed guides on installing each on your website. It also has a guide for Softaculous installation on your cPanel in case you have not done it before.
We also note in the InterServer review that you can upgrade or downgrade your plans at any time.
The ultimate result is increasing flexibility – in other words, if you are unsure of the specific plan that works well for you, you do not need to worry about being locked into a plan that you do not want.
10. Datacenters
Our InterServer review reveals that the company currently has three datacenters – one located in Los Angeles, CA, while the other two are both located in Secaucus, NJ.
You can choose any of them to host your website.
11. Money Back Guarantee
Just like other hosting companies Interserver also offer 30 days money back guarantee. If you don’t like Interserver then cancel it you will get full refund.
12. Security
Interserver build it’s own in house security solution to protect their customers data. So with Interserver you not need to worry about hacking or attack on your website or blog.
13. Performance
This is probably one of the reasons why the platform is not as popular – their uptime is below the industry standard.
That is quite risky if you are operating a large website that has heavy traffic or are trying to make sales – it can cost you customers because they think your website is too slow.
On Interserver’s official website they told 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Let’s get into the details.
Month & Year | Server Uptime | Server Response Time | Result |
---|---|---|---|
February 2020 | 99.99% | 676 ms | Excellent |
January 2020 | 99.99% | 622 ms | Excellent |
December 2019 | 100% | 702 ms | Excellent |
November 2019 | 99.97% | 664 ms | Excellent |
October 2019 | 99.99% | 814 ms | Excellent |
September 2019 | 99.92% | 619 ms | Good |
August 2019 | 99.98% | 689 ms | Excellent |
July 2019 | 99.99% | 599 ms | Excellent |
June 2019 | 99.99% | 745 ms | Excellent |
May 2019 | 99.87% | 654 ms | Ok |
April 2019 | 99.98% | 669 ms | Excellent |
March 2019 | 100% | 701 ms | Excellent |
There is some good news though, despite the poor uptime rates – their customer response rate is quite fast and very impressive.
When you are experiencing interruptions in your uptime, you can fill out a ticket for customer support and document your outage and the time it took.
All things said, it is quite transparent of the platform to allow you to keep tabs on your uptime and raise complaints about it when it slows down, because certain web hosting providers will use their own tools in measuring it – and they will not make this data available to customers.
Hurry! Get Free 3 Months Hosting On InterServer Hosting
14. Customer support
Among the many standout aspects of the platform is their 24/7 support policy, and that the support you get does not depend on the plan you use.
Among the aims of the web host is to offer their users top-notch support, which allows you to get plenty of help as you run into issues.
Other than the personalized approach to the process that every new customer receives, it is possible to receive assistance with certain tasks – such as migrating your website from another host to InterServer.
If you have any comments, queries or things that are concerning you, it is possible to reach the support team on a 24/7 basis. You can do that through the following channels:
- Telephone
- Ticketing center
- Live chat
All of the support staff team members are based in the US, so keep that in mind if you are a customer from outside the country.
Live chat – they answer customer queries quickly through this method, and will also offer free migrations of your existing sites to their servers.
Their support material is also quite comprehensive, and contains plenty of tutorials that are illustrated with screenshots.
Self-help articles – you will quickly appreciate the level of detail on their support articles, and they also give an idea on the recent up-to-date information aspects.
In addition, their blog is also quite helpful for both new and old users. Note that the support team and articles are only in English, as well as the website documentation.
5 InterServer Drawbacks, Cons or Disadvantages
Interserver is a long-standing player in the web hosting game, having been set up back in 1999.
The company has an infamous low staff turnover, with a lot of the top execs still holding the positions that they did back in the day.
On top of that, some of the senior management are also known to get hands-on with the business, answering the phone, and working on the ground.
This approach has resulted in a respectable company that offers quality service, but like anything, it has its flaws.
1. Not True Unlimited
Interserver has made it known that no account that is on a shared hosting plan can use up more than 20% percent of any given servers resources.
Even those who use the unlimited SSD hosting are bumped down to the lower-grade SATA if they use any more than 1GB of space.
2. Limited Sign Up Window
You may experience a delay in actually getting your site up and running with Interserver. Typically, this is because of account verification.
However, here it is a result of the company limiting the number of people that sign up at any given time.
There is a limit on 100 customers per day on each of its services, so you may have to plan your time strategically to even get on a plan, to begin with.
3. Domain and Hosting Approved Separately
Further adding to the time that it can take for you to get your site up and running, Interserver confirms and approves domains and hosting requests independently from one another.
As a result, you may end up with one and not the other, leaving you waiting with half of the finished package.
4. No Money-back for Dedicated Servers
It’s industry standard for web hosting providers to offer a 30 day grace period for new signups where they can apply for their money back.
That is the case with Interserver when it comes to shared hosting, but not VPS or dedicated servers, so make sure that these are the guys you want to go with before you click buy.
5. Average Load Speeds
Despite the impressive nature of a lot of what Interserver has to offer, the average load speeds are nothing impressive.
That’s not to say the speeds are horrible, but these days average just doesn’t cut it when it comes to loading times.
On top of that, there are periods where the load speeds of Interserver fall drastically, which can be detrimental depending on the circumstances.
Top 10 Hostings to Check
➩ Top 10 Best Web Hosting
➩ Top 10 Best WordPress Hosting
➩ Top 10 Best Cloud Hosting
➩ Top 10 Best Dedicated Server Hosting
➩ Top 10 Best VPS Hosting
➩ Top 10 Best Website Builders
Hosting Solutions at InterServer
The platform does offer a wide variety of solutions when it comes to their hosting packages, and it includes everything from dedicated hosting to shared options.
Before getting into details, here is a quick comparison of their hosting solutions and the features to expect from each of them.
ASP.NET hosting
- Unlimited FTP accounts from $5 per month
- Free SSL certificates
- Maximum of 20 websites
- Unlimited SSD storage
Cloud VPS
- Custom selection of storage size
- Custom selection of power selection
- Server monitoring from $6 per month
- Free migration services
Dedicated hosting
- No set up fee
- Uptime monitoring on a 24/7 basis
- 5 IP addresses
- Includes managed support from $50 a month
VPS in both Linux and Windows OS
The platform’s cloud VPS hosting comes for both Windows and Linux flavors, and you are in control of the resources you want to select and use.
The InterServer platform uses a control panel that is specific to their VPS packages known as Bread Basket, which will, in turn, allow you to select ‘slices’. This panel additionally comes with more than 100 one-click installation aps to make your hosting experience easier.
-
The array of Linux distributions
If there is one thing that stands out in this InterServer review, is that the dedicated hosting plans are quite impressive, and feature Xeon CPUs and Intel Atom.
Linux distributions
The fact remains that in terms of web hosting, InterServer has more distributions of Linux compared to other hosts. Some of these distributions include:
- Red Hat Fedora
- Ubuntu
- CentOS
- Gentoo
- Cloud Linux
Windows servers
On the other hand, you might prefer using Windows hosting instead of Linux hosting, and the company caters to that need.
They have an ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) frameworks, which also includes all the items you would need in a Windows server, such as more than 100 one-click installs.
This package is quite important if you want a way to manage high levels of complexity, especially when working on apps that require large development teams or working on those that is test-driven.
It will also provide you with complete control over the behavior and designs of your application.
-
WordPress Hosting
Interserver’s hosting is best fit to your wordpress website as they comes with many features that you can use to optimize your website.
-
Shared hosting
Regarding the shared hosting plans that you can find on this platform, some of the common benefits are unlimited storage, email, websites and transfers, as well as free SSL certificates.
This is quite a major deal, because it is not a standard thing to find a provider that gives both unlimited bandwidth and storage – especially for shared hosting packages.
Some of the interesting features we find in their shared hosting packages are:
Free SSL certificates
Many web hosting platforms will give free SSL certificates, but only as a part of the higher-end plans.
The most common case is that these certificates will cost extra cash to get them, except in this case, as they are a part of the deal regardless of the plan.
Unlimited bandwidth and storage
When it comes to many hosting providers, the term ‘unlimited bandwidth’ does not really mean unlimited.
It will only be so as long as you do not pass certain limits when it comes to bandwidth – and if you do, you have to pay more to access the service, or your server speeds slow down significantly.
The opposite is quite the case for InterServer though, as their ‘unlimited’ package actually means Unlimited. How does this happen though? – The answer is that, behind the scenes, the platform limits its servers to operate at 50% of the hardware’s capacity.
This means that you will never reach a point of maxing things out, since they will beef up their servers with more resources in case your capacity is exceeding the halfway mark.
Free Cloudflare CDN
If you have a website that receives traffic from all over the world, it is important to have a CDN, or content delivery network.
The reason is because it will allow browsers from any region of the globe to connect to the closest servers in their geographical region.
The shared hosting packages on this platform are all boosted by the Cloudflare CDN – all for free.
It does this through delivery optimization and caching, which helps your website to load faster and protects your site from security threats.
However, do note that you will need to sign up for a Cloudflare account in order to access these advantages.
Some Useful Facts on the Pricing
It is quite difficult to beat InterServer in terms of pricing, even in their shared hosting package (they only have one) that comes at a fee of just $5 every month.
However, this price is not stagnant – it reduces when you pay for certain time spans. When you pay on an annual basis, you get a 10% discount, a 2-year payment plan is 15% more affordable, and a 3-year payment plan reduces the fee by 20%.
As a general rule, you will pay the following depending on the payment period you choose:
- A 1-month plan costs $5 per month and renews at same price
- 6-month plans cost $4.75 per month, but you will be billed $28.50 every 6 months
- 12-month plans are $4.50 every month, but you will be billed $54 per year
- 3-year plans are $4 per month, but you will be billed $144 every 3 years
The benefits that come with the shared hosting package are:
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited number of emails
When it comes to their VPS plans, they have two options: the Windows and Linux VPS cloud plans. A summary on these plans is below:
Cloud web hosting | Linux cloud VPS | Windows Cloud VPS | |
Disk space | Unlimited | 25 GB | 25 GB |
Bandwidth | Unlimited | 1 TB | 1 TB |
Pricing per month | $4.50 | $6 | $10 |
Dedicated servers
These plans are:
Plan type | Storage | Type of processor | RAM | Price per month |
No info | 250 GB | Intel Dual-Core Atom | 1 GB | $50 |
No info | 250 GB | Xeon E3-1230v5 | 16 GB | $130 |
No info | 250 GB | Xeon E3-1230 | 8 GB | $60 |
No info | 250 GB | Six-Core E5-2620 (One core) | 8 GB | $175 |
No info | 250 GB | Six-Core E5-2620 (Two cores) | 8 GB | $340 |
Hurry! Get Free 3 Months Hosting On InterServer Hosting
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Hassle free hosting, especially for WordPress
- Convenient and useful support on a 24/7 basis
- No price hikes ever due to their ‘price lock guarantee’ policy
- 30-day money back guarantee
Cons
- Lack of a comprehensive CDN management system
- Backups are weekly instead of daily
Final thoughts
-
Company Details
Source: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/interserver
At the end of the day, our InterServer review reveals that this is a great platform to go for if you are a tech savvy student or entrepreneur, or you own a non-profit organization (due to free services).
It will not be the best option if you do not know web technologies though, as it will require a steep learning curve.