LunarPages Web Hosting Review

LunarPages is one of the big names in web hosting. Apart from their support, LunarPages is an extremely average web hosting company. We consider their package options, server speeds and prices run of the mill. LunarPages terms don’t leave a lot of wiggle room either, this was demonstrated when we hosted a fairly high traffic PHP/MySQL site. Apparently the site was bringing down the server, either their servers are 10 years old or LunarPages are a little stingy with their resources.

Their basic hosting package claims unlimited space and bandwidth, yet their more expensive business package claims 15GB of bandwidth. Why does a package that costs more offer less, it all comes back to overselling techniques.

However, bundled are some nice software packages and deals. Recently they have ended their partnership with CoffeeCup software, where users were given a free copy of a webpage editor. However since that deal ended they now have 11 freebies that they value at $775, obviously this is heavily overvalued. Nevertheless there are some nice bonuses that are completely unrelated to web hosting. They’ll give you a free copy of Parrallels Workstation for Windows that is worth $49.99, this allows you to run multiple operating systems within Windows. This is probably the item of most value, the other 10 are worth very little to anyone.

Since we stopped using LunarPages services they’ve introduced a Live Sales Chat system, which we tested with no avail, and not managing to get through to anyone. This being a stark contrast to HostGator, which in our experience has been available almost 24/7.

The killer downside to LunarPages is they require that you buy on a three month basis or greater. For example, the basic package advertised at $4.95 a month would actually cost you $9.95 a month if you want to pay quarterly and not annually. Essentially the minimum you can pay initially is $29.85.

LunarPages and HostGator are similar webhosting companies, there is very little reason why we would choose LunarPages over HostGator. (Look out for our HostGator review, coming soon.)

We give LunarPages shared webhosting services 6/10.