We admit that we were skeptical about hosting a website with HostWithLove, not least because of the company’s unusual branding. We were, however, quickly proven wrong and now see the meaning behind its name. From the way things are explained on the company’s website to our initial interaction with its representative, we have experienced HostWithLove as a friendly host that goes out of its way to explain things in an understandable manner. Plus its plans are very affordable. They start at $39.78 a year and are packed with useful features. Read our in-depth HostWithLove review below.
Table of Contents
HostWithLove Review at a Glance
HostWithLove Performance
We have been testing HostWithLove since June 2019. We have been using HetrixTools to monitor both the uptime and load times of our website with HostWithLove. The performance of our website hosted in Sydney, Australia, has been monitored from three locations: Sydney, Singapore and San Francisco. Because of the distance from Singapore and San Francisco to the server in Sydney, we focus on load times as reported from Sydney only.
You can see the latest live results for yourself. Below are the HostWithLove test results so far.
2019 Uptime:
99.99%
Average Load Time:
391 ms
HostWithLove Features
HostWithLove offers four shared hosting plans. The cheapest S1 plan costs $3.90/month and is limited to one primary and one add-on domain. Starting from the S2 plan ($6.90/month), you can host an unlimited number of websites.
Apart from the storage, bandwidth and number of domains, all four plans have identical resource limits, such as CPU and RAM. If you outgrow these limits, HotWithLove offers semi-dedicated plans which are also hosted on shared servers but allocate 2 CPU Cores and 2+ GB of RAM Memory. HostWithLove does not provide VPS hosting but offers managed dedicated servers for larger websites.
Plan Specs
We have been testing the cheapest plan. Here are the plan specs in detail.
| Name of the plan | S1 |
| Monthly price | $3.90 |
| Annual price | $39.78 |
| Recurring price | same |
| Domains | 2 |
| SSD storage | 5 GB |
| Bandwidth | 50 GB |
| Email accounts | unlimited |
| Databases | unlimited |
| CloudLinux | yes |
| CPU Cores | 100% of 1 CPU core |
| RAM Memory | 1 GB |
Technical
The hardware used by HostWithLove is key to its excellent performance. Our website is hosted on a rather small server that runs on Intel Xeon E3-1245 and includes 8 cores, 31 GB RAM and 437 GB storage. The software features include the latest PHP version, MariaDB and Cloudflare CDN, including RailGun. See more features below.
| Control panel | cPanel |
| Script library | Softaculous |
| Web server | LiteSpeed |
| Cache | LSCache (optional) |
| MariaDB database server | yes |
| PHP 7.x | yes |
| HTTP/2 | yes |
| SSH (advanced) | yes |
| Let's Encrypt SSL | yes |
| Security | ModSecurity |
| Backup software | JetBackup |
| Backups | daily |
Essential
HostWithLove provides fast and friendly support. Its reported ticket response time is under 80 minutes. Our hosting service has been flawless so far, so we did not require technical assistance. We did ask pre-sales questions and the response was fast and very helpful.
Among other essentials, HostWithLove has refund and uptime guarantees.
| 24/7 support | yes |
| Knowledge base | yes |
| Instant setup | yes |
| Free migrations | yes |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% |
| Money back guarantee | 45 days |
Open Source
HostWithLove is perfect for both advanced and less experienced users of such open-source applications as WordPress. Besides one-click installs and free migrations, HostWithLove provides best effort support when it comes to patching compromised websites.
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
HostWithLove is transparent about its history and operations. Founded in 2012, the company is based in Singapore. It is privately owned. The key person is Cody Tan. The company is very small, although it is not clear how many people are actually involved. It claims to manage over 6,000 accounts.
HostWithLove offers web hosting in 8 data centers: 4 in the US (Orlando, Dallas, Chicago and LA), 2 in Europe (Amsterdam and London) and 2 in Asia-Pacific (Singapore and Sydney).
Pricing
The pricing is also very transparent. The plans renew at the same price. A longer billing cycle offers nice savings. Payment methods include credit card and PayPal.
HostWithLove Review in a Nutshell
We are quite impressed with the performance of our website hosted with HostWithLove. The company has certainly exceeded our expectations. HostWithLove is easily one of the best web hosting options for Australia.
One potential criticism we may have is the limits on the number of domains on the cheapest plan. These limits are, however, reasonable and essential for the stability of the system. Another concern is that HostWithLove is a small hosting company. The response times are, however, industry-standard and support is available 24/7.
What we love about HostWithLove is low prices, 45-day refunds, generous resource limits (100% CPU), free daily backups and a choice of 8 data center locations.