CloakHost is a webhost for proxy websites. Proxies essentially allow users to view the Internet through the server, as if they were actually sitting and browsing the web on the physical server. Web users use these for anonymity and to get to websites they might otherwise not be able to use.

99.9% of webhosts have a strict policy, disallowing any customer from hosting a proxy on their shared hosting (nearly all hosts will allow proxies on semi-dedicated or dedicated servers). This is due to the elevated bandwidth and server resources that they consume in comparison to the majority of websites.

CloakHost allows payment through PayPal, AlertPay and MoneyBookers, all of which are processed instantly.

Essentially, CloakHost delivers some of the fastest shared web hosting for proxy owners available on the web. Probably the key issue is the random downtime, this could be due to overcapacity or a number of other reasons. The percentage downtime isn’t known, however when you’re hosting a proxy, uptime may not be a key issue. It’s a great niche service with little in the way of inane offerings, instead focusing on real substance.

We give CloakHost hosting services 8/10.

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.

Ok, lets get virtual dedicated out the way, ours keeps crashing. We had around 5 sites on a virtual dedicated server and the traffic seemed to use up the entirety of the RAM available and the sites kept going down. After contacting GoDaddy the advice was to pay $70 to them in order to have an expert examine the issue. This is typical GoDaddy. Having dealt with them before they clearly have absolutely no compassion for their customers, you could even say they have contempt for their customers, not only this, but they really do aim to squeeze every last penny out of you.

Shared hosting started off well, but then we started to receive constant error pages due to increased traffic. GoDaddy then recommended moving to dedicated hosting. Which we did, removing the errors, but the pages were responding far slower. Shared hosting at GoDaddy is a little overpriced and not very configurable, but for small sites it should be fine. However, we wouldn’t recommend it!

The issue with GoDaddy is their size. Although at first it might seem easiest and cheapest to go with a large faceless web hosting company, this isn’t the best way in our experience. Web hosting is extremely competitive, that’s why there are so many small web hosting companies that try to offer everything they possibly can to compete with the big web hosting companies. You can also deal with the same people and feel like a customer and not a record in a database.

We give GoDaddy hosting services 5/10.