After looking at more than 25 web hosts day and night, I would say InterServer is one of the most honest web hosts out there. If there is an integrity score I can give, I will give them full marks. That’s why this website is hosted by them.
InterServer has a very different practice compared to other web hosts which is where you need to take note.
Fixed Monthly Price
Their pricing is fixed at $7/month disregard to how long you want to pay at once. You can pay $7 every month. Or you can pay once a year at $84. You can even pay 2 years or 3 years up front but there is no point in doing so because there is no discount.
Renewal Price Locked Forever
This is not the best thing. The best thing is once you signup, your price is LOCKED forever. They won’t increase your renewal price forever.
This is very different from what other web hosts are doing. Other web hosts are constantly increasing their ‘renewal’ price.
Let’s say you saw a web hosts selling cheaply for a 36 months and the renewal price looks ‘acceptable’ to you. You decided to signed up. But after 36 months when the time comes to pay for the renewal, they probably have increased the renewal price several times and it become ‘unacceptable’! This is what I have observed happening for the last 2 decades.
InterServer has promised not to do that. You can locked in your renewal price. And they have kept their promise so far since they are established in 1999. That’s 20+ years of promised kept.
This plan was selling for $5 before they increase it to $7. However, all existing customers are not affected and is still paying $5.
They blame cPanel licensing fee for the price increase. Rumors are they will release a new $5 plan with another control panel. I hope they are not stupid enough to do that because experience from other web hosts show that it won’t work. Customer who prefer cPanel will stick to cPanel.
Ease of Cancellation
InterServer high integrity is supported by their ease of cancellation. You can cancel your web hosting account just by logging into the control panel, select your plan and click a ‘cancel’ button! You do not even need to contact customer support. Your cancellation will be approved immediately without human interference. No one will come and beg you to stay or try to keep you hostage. Renewal will stop immediately.
If you change your mind, there is a ‘reactivate’ button where you can reactivate your account again. If you reactive it within 3 months, all your files will still be intact.
You should also pay attention to the following features that differentiate them with other web hosts.
LiteSpeed Web Server
They uses a faster and better version of web server called LiteSpeed. LiteSpeed is a commercial product and require higher cost on their end. Most web hosts are using Apache. Apache is not bad at all. Just that LiteSpeed said to be faster and better. Can we feel it as an end user? Probably not. But does it matter? Yes. With a server program that is written better from the start, the chances of their server to go overload is slimmer compare to Apache.
Other web hosts that uses LiteSpeed are GreenGeeks and A2Hosting (only premium plans).
SSD Caching
Many web hosts begin to offer SSD. SSD are faster on benchmarking but to end user, it is debatable. I also want to point out that InterServer do not put everything on SSD. It is only for “caching”. So it is more a half-baked SSD solution.
Real Human
And at last, this is probably the only web hosts with a group photo of their own staffs working at InterServer. Most other web hosts are just using stock photos of good looking people who are just photography models.
What I Don’t Like
Every we hosts comes with two “control panels”. First one controls your web hosting and InterServer uses cPanel. Everybody likes cPanel. That’s not the problem.
There is also a “back-end” control panel, where it controls your billing and support tickets. This control panel is self-developed by InterSever and it is quite messy at first. Although most of the time we are using cPanel and not this back-end control panel, they certainly can improve it to make it more user friendly.
Also, I really hate the email they send to me every time I login to this back-end control panel. They said it is a security feature and unfortunately there is no way to opt out of it. They love security so much they even added a Capcha test before you can login. I really don’t like all those.
I also do not like the fact that one must create an “account” first with interserver before you can make an order. You will know what I mean when you try to sign up.
First Month $0.01 Promotion
This is the only promotion you can get. Pay $0.01 for the first month and $7/month there after. If you decided to cancel within 30 days, you will still get your one cent back.
You can activate the promotion here.
I hope my 2 cents helps.