HostMantis is the go-to host if you are looking for inexpensive shared hosting. The company’s cheapest plan costs $17.95/year (DirectAdmin) or $35.95 (cPanel) and allows for an unlimited number of domains within the plan’s resource limits. Our experience with HostMantis has been very positive, both regarding performance and technical support. Read our in-depth HostMantis review below.
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Table of Contents
HostMantis Review at a Glance
HostMantis Performance
We regularly test HostMantis using HetrixTools to monitor both the uptime and load times of our website. For our most recent results we tested HostMantis for a year between November 2018 and November 2019. The performance of our website hosted in Germany was monitored from three locations: London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.
The uptime was typically between 99.96% and 100%. Only in July 2019 did the uptime drop below 99.9%, likely due to maintenance related to changes in cPanel pricing. The load times are nonetheless fantastic, normally under 300 ms.
Below is a summary of the uptime and average load times for 2019. You can see also the actual test results and the test site setup in detail for yourself.
2019 Uptime:
99.97%
Average Load Time:
239 ms
HostMantis Features
HostMantis specializes both in cPanel and DirectAdmin hosting. Both control panels are easy to use, with cPanel being a more popular option and DirectAdmin having a lower price.
HostMantis offers shared web hosting and VPS servers. Although HostMantis’s VPS are unmanaged, there is plenty of room for growth within shared hosting. For example, the top enterprise plan includes 5.5 CPU cores and 8 GB RAM.
If you are just starting a new website, we would recommend HostMantis’s Entry (cP $3.95/m, DA $1.95/m) plan.
The good thing about HostMantis’s web hosting is that each plan has a different allocation of resource limits. So, if your website needs to handle more and more visitors, you can smoothly upgrade to the next plan.
Plan Specs
We have been testing the cheapest plan. Here are the plan specs in detail.
| Name of the plan | Entry |
| Monthly price | cP $3.95 / DA $1.95 |
| Annual price | $35.95 / $17.95 |
| Recurring price | same |
| Domains | unlimited |
| SSD storage | 25 GB |
| Bandwidth | unlimited |
| Email accounts | unlimited |
| Databases | unlimited |
| CloudLinux | yes |
| CPU Cores | 100% of 1 CPU core |
| RAM Memory | 3 GB |
Technical
The hardware used by HostMantis is key to its excellent performance. Our website is hosted on the server that runs on Intel Xeon W-2145 and includes 16 cores, 125 GB RAM and 1.7 TB storage. The software features shown below are equally top-notch.
| Control panel | cPanel or DirectAdmin |
| Script library | Softaculous |
| Web server | LiteSpeed |
| Cache | LSCache |
| MariaDB database server | yes |
| PHP 7.x | yes |
| HTTP/2 | yes |
| SSH (advanced) | via control panel |
| Let's Encrypt SSL | yes |
| Security | DDoS Protection |
| Backup software | JetBackup |
| Backups | daily |
Essential
HostMantis provides good 24/7 support. Tech support is always to the point. Our ticket was answered within 1 hour. The company also has refund and uptime guarantees.
| 24/7 support | yes |
| Knowledge base | yes |
| Instant setup | yes |
| Free migrations | cP to cP / DA to DA |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% |
| Money back guarantee | 30 days |
Open Source
HostMantis has an extensive knowledge base with many articles about such open-source scripts as WordPress. It also lists plugins not recommended on HostMantis’s servers. When you build a WordPress website, HostMantis automatically installs the LSCache plugin.
Transparency
Whether you are looking for web hosting for personal or business projects, you need a host that you can rely on. This is why we always examine the transparency of the company and its practices.
Company
HostMantis is based in Michigan, US. It provides a PO Box rather than a physical address. Founded by Scott Newton, the host has been operating under the HostMantis brand since 2010. The company is privately owned and small, although it is not clear how many people are actually involved.
HostMantis offers cPanel web hosting in 8 data centers: US, UK, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France and Germany. Its DirectAdmin hosting is available in the US, UK and Singapore.
Pricing
The pricing is very transparent. The plans renew at the same price. A longer billing cycle offers nice savings. For example, a three-year DirectAdmin plan costs $52.95 (or less than $1.50 per month).
Payment methods include credit card, PayPal and Bitcoin.
HostMantis Review in a Nutshell
We like HostMantis very much and clearly see the meaning behind its motto of ‘making reliable hosting affordable’. There is hardly any other host that offers the kind of value at such low prices (under $20/year!).
There are not many issues that we can point out. One is that HostMantis specializes in shared hosting and does not offer managed VPS servers, only self-managed KVM VPS servers. Another is that its support is rather impersonal, albeit professional and to the point.
What we love about HostMantis is low prices, 30-day refunds, generous resource limits, free daily backups and a choice of 8 data center locations.
