HostMonster, by consistently making our top 10 list, certainly shows its enduring stamina in this competitive area. All of the hosting companies who have made our top 10 list are exceptional, such that ranking them can be difficult and HostMonster is no exception. Offering one single plan, which has been tailored to offer the most bang for the buck and to accommodate the widest range of clients, HostMonster has chosen to focus on the important factors while placing less of an emphasis on less pressing features.

Like the rest of the hosts present in our top 10 chart, HostMonster pulls no punches when it comes to offering reliable services. Any host who has shown to be lacking in this respect does not make it onto this list. The performance we experienced with HostMonster was, of course, exceptional, only showing brief and relatively rare periods of slowness. We experienced no outages with HostMonster, which is noteworthy. In summary, the performance was pretty good, but the reliability was outstanding.

Owing to their focus on one single hosting plan, and by virtue of how much they have packed into this plan, the value received exceeds the low cost involved in hosting with them. Their plan allows for unlimited storage and monthly transfer, unlimited hosted domains (which is unique and wonderful), a free domain name registration, database support (both MySQL and PostgreSQL), a slew of free and ready-to-go software solutions and multimedia streaming. You will be hard pressed to find another host who offers so much for so little.

HostMonster utilized the ever popular and easy to use Cpanel control panel system. The performance and reliability of their implementation of Cpanel was exceptional. We had no problems with it at all, not even the occasional slowness seen elsewhere. Integrated into this is Fantastico, which enables you to quickly and easily install additional 3rd party open source scripts such as shopping carts, blogs, and wikis. This is a very popular and useful feature and is not available with all hosts. Overall, their control panel and satellite features are well implemented and very comprehensive.

We found HostMonster’s customer support to be decent. Although other hosts reviewed surpassed the support offered by HostMonster, this is not to say that HostMonster’s support is not good. It is. Any issue we raised with them was addressed in a competent and prompt manner. They offer a comprehensive knowledge base, a convenient ticketing system and, of course, toll-free phone support, all available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Summary If you need a lot of bang for your buck and have a need for databases and more exotic features like Ruby on Rails, multimedia streaming or Fantastico, HostMonster is definitely a wise choice. Visit HostMonster