6. Flux Services Hosting Review

Posted on March 14, 2008
Filed Under business web hosting, cheap web host, Site Builder, Flux Services Web Hosting, cheap web hosting, webhosting reviews, web hosting, web hosting company, web hosting review, web host |

Click the following to go directly to the Flux Services web site. 

Flux Services/Ultra Website Hosting offers a reasonably priced plan at only $9.95 a month, and a specialized ASP plan for $11.95 a month. ASP is a special service to host sites built with Active Server Pages technology.  If you use it and need it, you know what I’m talking about.  If not, no need to worry about it here. You can read up on it by doing a search, if you’d like. I’ll review their Ultra Unlimited Plan here, although most of this applies to their ASP Plan, as well.

Flux Services offers a large amount of space for this price, 500 GB, and also has many of the features you should be looking for in a web host. They have both ticket and chat support, although it can be difficult or impossible to access chat from some browsers. They give you a free domain name with each hosting package, and also have a searchable knowledge base and Flash tutorials for many of the functions you may have issues with. They also offer an array of applications like Joomla, Drupal and several blogging platforms right in their control panel.

I basically have just a few issues with Flux Services/Ultra Website Hosting, but with my focus on service, support and wanting to know exactly what I’m getting for my money, they could prove to be serious concerns. First of all, Flux Services offers unlimited domains with your account, as long as you don’t exceed your 500 GB space, which is both reasonable and can be done. But, they also offer “unlimited” bandwidth, which I’ve found to be a red flag with any hosting company. I’ve found that “unlimited” bandwidth is never really unlimited, you just don’t know how much you have available until they shut down your sites or start charging you for “excess” usage. In fact, Flux’s FAQ section even contains a statement saying that if you would like to increase your available bandwidth, you can pay an additional $2 per GB per month. Of course, if the bandwidth were truly unlimited, you wouldn’t ever need to pay for more.

They also only offer a 15 day money back guarantee, which is better than some hosts, but really doesn’t give you much time to get your web site going and test out their service. Most premium hosts offer a 30 day money back guarantee. Flux does give you a “low price guarantee”, but it is only for any hosting service from their own “top ten competitors” list, for any plan comparable to theirs. My bet is that they’ve already researched the hosting companies on that list, and none of them offer comparable plans, or else they offer them at the same, or a slightly higher, price.

Another problem I had on their website is that the link to their Site Builder demo brings up a 404 error page. Now, it is at least a custom 404 page, but I’d like all of the links in my web host’s site to work. A minor point, but definitely something to consider. I also found several of their pages to be very slow to load, something I don’t want to have to worry about with my own web sites. Below are the basics of Flux Service’s Ultra Unlimited Plan;

• Free domain name with hosting
• Unlimited domains hosted on each account, up to 500 GB space limit
• 500 GB of space
• “Unlimited” bandwidth
• Email and live chat support
• 99% uptime guarantee (the lowest I’d consider), with 99.5% stated as the actual uptime for the last 3 months
• Online help database, FAQ and Flash tutorials
• 15 day money back guarantee
• Low price hosting guarantee - must request before purchase and only from their “top ten” list of competitors!
• Unlimited email accounts, up to 500 GB combined space limit
• Unlimited MySQL databases, sub-domains and parked domains
• Site builder and the most needed scripts included
• E-commerce shopping carts included
• Cost - $119.40 per year, paid yearly

Overall, Flux services offer a large amount of space for a decent price, but their limited money back guarantee, minimum up-time guarantee, and the pretty much useless low hosting price guarantee doesn’t do much to instill confidence about their performance or service. The slow load time for some of their pages, and the one link that leads to a 404 error page, in my mind puts a small blemish on my estimation of their capability. Flux is definitely a good choice compared to the hosts that are lower on this list, and much better than many who didn’t even make the list. You can find out more about their offers by clicking on Flux Services Hosting.  But if you want the best hosting for your money, read on to find even better choices.

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