NameHero Web Hosting Review | PCMag

It’s fairly common to find web hosting services offering shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting packages. NameHero sets itself apart by merging these conventional configurations with virtualized cloud technology. The cloud-based web host offers numerous plans for small- and medium-sized business endeavors, including reseller options. It features an easy-to-use dashboard and cPanel, excellent customer service, terrific uptime, and scalable plans with unlimited email and free SSL certificates. That said, NameHero lacks phone support, has confusing renewal rates, and becomes relatively expensive once its generous promotional pricing ends, unlike DreamHost, our Editors’ Choice winner for cloud hosting.

(Credit: NameHero)

NameHero Pricing and Features

NameHero has several cloud-powered shared hosting plans. With shared hosting, your website is stored on a physical server alongside other clients. The resources are literally shared (hence the tier’s name), but so are server costs, keeping prices low compared with other forms of hosting. NameHero virtualizes these servers to give your shared plan designated resources, improving stability and performance. These plans are scalable, so you can easily upgrade them to meet your resource needs.

The entry-level Starter Cloud lets you build one website that has unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited SSD storage, and 1GB of RAM. In a nice touch, NameHero is upfront with the fact that “unlimited” isn’t truly unlimited(Opens in a new window). However, you won’t hit the caps if you have meager web hosting needs. This plan starts at $4.16 per month with a one-year commitment, or $3.40 per month with a three-year commitment.

On the opposite end, NameHero’s top-tier shared hosting plan, Business Cloud (starting at $19.98 per month), offers unlimited monthly data (for roughly 100,000 visitors per month), unlimited NVMe storage (up to 500,000 files), 4GB of RAM, and unlimited website creation. High-tier plans also throw in a free domain name, and can also be purchased/renewed on a per-month basis, rather than on an annual basis.

As with many web hosting services, NameHero’s listed rates are discounted prices for your first billing cycle. NameHero offers pleasantly cheap web hosting when signing up, and the company even throws in seasonal discounts on top of your signup rate to further sweeten the deal. However, these prices jump considerably upon renewal (Starter Cloud renews at $10.95 per month, Business Cloud renews at $34.95 per month). Plus, the renewal rates aren’t easy to find, requiring some digging. That’s particularly annoying if you intend to use the service for a lengthy amount of time.

Overall, NameHost’s web hosting services are good. All of its plans come with a free secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate, free site migration, unlimited emails, and LiteSpeed caching. You get good value for your dollar, but there are services that still edge it out. HostGator, our Editors’ Choice for shared hosting services, offers similarly priced plans, but includes domain registration at each tier. Likewise, DreamHost, offers shared hosting plans with markedly cheaper renewal rates (starting at $7.99 per month).

Note that NameHero’s plans all use Linux-based servers; it lacks Windows Server options.

NameHero WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting

NameHero’s WordPress and WooCommerce hosting services are identical to its shared cloud hosting plans, down to the naming, features, and price. The only significant difference between the two is that WordPress (or WooCommerce) comes installed, saving you the trouble of downloading it yourself. Please note that you have the option to manually install WordPress upon purchasing a regular, shared hosting plan. Likewise, you can also add the WooCommerce plug-in, too. Take a look at our WordPress plug-in suggestions to maximize your website’s potential.

The WordPress and WooCommerce plans are ideal if you are dead set on using these specific platforms, or are so unfamiliar with web hosting that you don’t trust yourself to install them alone. BlueHost is an Editors’ Choice for WordPress hosting that offers a handy marketplace and site-creation tools. WP Engine is another fantastic Editors’ Choice option that features a robust selection of WordPress plans, including managed and e-commerce hosting.

(Credit: NameHero)

NameHero VPS Cloud Hosting

Virtual private servers (VPS) are a step up from shared hosting services. VPS is similar to shared hosting in that your website is stored on a server alongside those of other clients. VPS differs in that there are far fewer clients per server, giving your website more resources that improve its reliability. If you liken shared hosting to sharing an apartment with roommates, then VPS hosting is like having an apartment in a complex all to yourself. NameHero’s servers offer cloud-virtualized resources to accommodate higher traffic, and they are fully managed offerings. 

NameHero has four VPS hosting plans. KCDC 2GB Cloud VPS ($54.95 per month or $39.95 per month with an annual commitment) is the entry-level option that gives you 30GB NVMe storage, 2GB RAM, 2 CPU cores, and 10TB of monthly data transfers. If your online projects demand more power, NameHost’s highest VPS plan, KCDC 8GB Cloud VPS, delivers 120GB NVMe storage, 8GB RAM, 8 CPU cores, and 10TB monthly data transfers. This costs $99.95 per month, or $87.95 per month when billed annually.

These are good VPS plans and configurations, but NameCheap’s offerings are limited compared to Hostwinds, the Editors’ Choice for VPS hosting. Hostwinds offers a robust selection of managed and unmanaged Linux and Windows VPS plans. The starting plan offers 1GB of RAM, one CPU core, 30GB of SSD disk space, and 1TB of monthly data transfers for $10.99 per month. This scales up to a beefy server with 16 CPU cores, 96GB of RAM, 750GB of SSD disk space, and 9TB of monthly data transfers for $526.99. Hostwinds simply offers a much wider range of VPS plans for your needs.

NameHero Dedicated Cloud Hosting

When VPS just isn’t cutting it, you need a dedicated server all to yourself. If VPS is like renting an apartment, then dedicated servers are like owning a home. Dedicated hosting gives you a server all to yourself, meaning that all resources are devoted to your website. This also means the burden of maintaining server costs falls squarely on your shoulders, making it a much more expensive service than VPS or shared hosting. Dedicated cloud hosting delivers the processing power of a traditional dedicated server, with the flexibility and provisioning of cloud platforms.

NameHero is equipped to give you just that. Starting with the Standard Cloud Dedicated plan, you get a four-core, 3.8GHz processor; 8GB RAM; 210GB of SSD Storage; and 5TB monthly data transfers. This configuration costs $275.95 per month, per annual billing cycle. On the higher end of the spectrum lies the Hypersonic Cloud Dedicated plan, a tier that has a 16-core 1GHz processor, 62GB RAM, 900GB of SSD Storage, and 5TB monthly data transfers. This costs $669.95 per month, charged on an annual basis. You can also contact NameHero if you’re interested in enterprise hosting solutions. 

These are good dedicated hosting options, albeit limited in scope and scale compared to other web hosts. For example, AccuWeb has an exhaustive catalog of dedicated server plans. The most affordable plan is the $105-per-month plan that includes 8GB of RAM, 500GB of storage, and 20TB of monthly data transfers, making it cheaper and more robust than NameHero’s own starter package. The Editors’ Choice pick for dedicated hosting has plans that scale well should your business need even more resources.

NameHero Reseller Hosting

If you’re in the business of selling web hosting to other people, check out NameHero’s reseller hosting plans. There are four reseller hosting tiers on offer. The starter plan, Silver, gives you up to 40 Client Accounts, 60GB NVMe Storage, 600GB monthly data transfers, free SSL Certificates, free LiteSpeed caching, and free Blesta Automation for $46.99 per month. The highest-tier reseller hosting, Diamond, gives you 150 Client Accounts, 270GB NVMe Storage, 2700GB Bandwidth, free SSL Certificates, free LiteSpeed, and Web Host Manager Complete Solution (WHMCS) for $116.99 monthly. The reseller plans are white-label hosting, meaning you can sell the service with your own company branding.

These are good plans, and the white-label servers make them all the more appealing. However, Hostwinds—our Editors’ Choice for reseller hosting—tops this with a wider variety of reseller and white-label server plans, starting at $6.99 per month for unlimited email, storage, and data transfers. 

(Credit: NameHero)

Building a Website With NameHero

Once you’ve created an account and purchased a plan, you are taken to the NameHero dashboard, which is home to your many plans and services. Finding what you want from here is clear and straightforward. Critical menus are on a blue tab on the left of the screen, with commands for Home, My Cloud, Domains, Billing, and Support. Clicking My Cloud opens a submenu with My Services, Order New Services, and Available Addons. My Services lists all your products, including your web hosting plans. In addition, you can log in to cPanel to edit and create your site, log in to Webmail to view your email accounts, or upgrade/downgrade your services. 

NameHero took about 24 hours to confirm payment and activate our test site. Some hosts, like Nexcess, are considerably faster than this, so your website can go live within minutes of the purchase. Nonetheless, the setup process was extremely fast once our site was active. NameHero’s cPanel includes WordPress Manager by Softaculous, so installing WordPress onto our site took a few clicks and password management keystrokes. You can also scroll through the cPanel to find valuable website metrics, such as your file and image managers, visitor and bandwidth data, and security features. The colorful graphical presentation creates a beginner-friendly vibe. 

NameHero Performance and Uptime 

It’s extremely important that your website has impeccable uptime. If your site goes down, clients cannot access it, which is especially bothersome if you run an online business. We used site-monitoring software to test for website uptime and outages. It pinged our test site every 15 minutes, and was set up to alert us whenever it couldn’t access the site for more than a minute.  

After 14 days of testing, we were pleased to see that our site didn’t go down a single time. NameHero is a stable host for building your website or online business.

NameHero Security Features

Websites hosted on NameHero’s servers are scanned and managed by what the company calls its Security Shield: a suite of services that includes automated file scans and patches, advanced firewall, instruction prevention, and reputation monitoring. For additional security, NameHero also offers SSL certificates for all of its plans, so your visitors and clients can feel safe as they browse. 

(Credit: NameHero)

NameHero Customer Support and Money-Back Guarantee

As a managed web hosting service, NameHero offers 24/7/365 customer support via email and live chat. NameHero lacks phone support, unfortunately. You can also submit a ticket for help via the NameHero dashboard. 

We contacted support several times to get a feel for their responsiveness and knowledge. In one instance, we messaged a representative via live chat to ask about the renewal rates, since they were not immediately apparent on the website. We were greeted within 3 minutes with an extensive list of the renewal rates for all web hosting types we inquired about. We later reached the support crew via the ticket system to ask about SSL certificates in regard to a domain conflict we were experiencing. Support circled back within an hour with an appropriate response, which was to clear our DNS cache, as well as a link to an instructional page to show us how to do it. NameHero’s support is satisfactory. They responded promptly and accurately to all our queries. 

Should you have any issues with NameHero’s services, the company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all its plans. This is a common trial window and should be enough time to decide whether NameHero is the right host for you. However, it still doesn’t beat DreamHost’s outstanding 97-day guarantee for shared hosting plans. 

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Should You Host With NameHero?

NameHero offers a well-rounded selection of every type of hosting a potential user could want, from humble shared servers to robust dedicated servers, all enhanced by cloud virtualization for improved resource management and performance. It even includes reseller packages for folks in the business of selling web hosting. Great customer support, reliable uptime, and an accessible dashboard and cPanel also create a comfortable environment for new users unfamiliar with the ins and outs of web hosting. Pricing can be a sticking point, however, depending on how long you intend to use the service. If you want cheap, short-term hosting, NameHero is absolutely worth a try. If you’re in it for the long haul, other services offer similar benefits for cheaper renewal fees. 

For more, check out How to Create a Website for all the website-building resources you could want. If you have a site and are looking for ways to improve it, sneak a peek at 10 Easy But Powerful SEO Tips to Boost Traffic.