"It is not just the large disk space or bandwidth that makes us rank LunarPages as one of the best web hosts, but its their superior customer support! Their open community forum is flooded with tons of happy customers."
$7.95/month (FREE Setup) 1,000 MB disk space! 40 GB Bandwidth!
LunarPages Overview
We have clients who have been hosted by LunarPages under this $7.95 plan for more than 2 years. As a matter of fact, one of them has four websites hosted by LunarPages and are very satisfied with their service. The discussion below is based on our experience with LunarPages and comments by their customers. You cannot get more inside information about LunarPages, unless you yourself give them a try :-) Again, we dont recommend any rush decissions. Take a look at their website, see if their package suits your needs, compare them to other reviewed web hosting companies and then make a decission.
LunarPages serves over 70,000 clients. It was founded in the summer of 2000 when a successful large scale hosting provider, Add2Net Corporation, expanded its hosting offerings to include shared hosting. They offer two hosting plans - Shuttle ($7.95) and Voyager ($22.95). The $22.95 plan is an ecommerce ready package with 1,500 MB of disk space and 80 GB of bandwidth. We will be discussing the $7.95 plan.
Plan Size and Features
1,000 MB of disk space and 40 GB of bandwidth are a lot. For instance, you have a large and high quality picture that is 228 KB (kilobyte) in size. With 1,000 MB of disk space, you can store more than 3,500 copies of this picture! And with 40 GB/month bandwidth, this picture can be viewed more than 175,000 times a month! The most suitable words to describe 1,000 MB of disk space and 40 GB of bandwidth that you get at LunarPages are "More Than Enough!". :-)
We understand there are many hosts which offer large bandwidth, but keep in mind that these hosts might have funny restrictions such as file size limit, daily bandwidth limit, or even binary files bandwidth limit (pictures, MP3s, Flash ...). We can assure you that LunarPages does not have such restrictions with your disk space and bandwidth usage. You can upload a single 1,000 MB file if you want and you can finish your 40 GB bandwidth in 1 day. As the LunarPages founder and director, Maximiliam Andersen told us, "We actually allow people to use everything and we have no problem offering them what we are currently offering."
Customer Support
It is not the large disk space or bandwidth that makes us rank LunarPages as #1 but its superior customer support! They spend a great deal of money hiring a lot of support staff to take care of their customers. All of them are very friendly and knowledgeable. With their effort on customer support, you can expect the best attention from them.
1. Email support - Simply email support@lunarpages.com and you will always get a useful reply, no matter if you are a current customer or you just need to ask some presale questions. Useful replies mean they will give you the exact answer you need. We suggest that you send an email to LunarPages right now to see how effective they are. All email will automatically be tracked by the same ticket system used by the support help desk. This is our favorite method to request support, because it is fast, convenient and effective. LunarPages email support is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
2. Support Help Desk - You will send your inquiry through the use of an online form. All your inquires will be tracked and recorded using their ticket system. They even keep a history of all your issues so you can refer back to them anytime you want. There is also a knowledgebase of frequently asked questions in the help desk so you can find your answers without creating a support ticket.
3. Toll-Free Support - Just call 1-877-LUNARPAGES if you need phone support for USA and Canada. For the United Kingdom, call 0800-072-9150 instead. If you live outside of these countries, you cannot dial the toll free number. They provide another support line for their international customers: 1-714-521-8150. We have called them several times and they actually answer the phone very well!
4. LunarForums - LunarPages provides forums to let their customers communicate and help each other. You can find many answers for your questions. You will also meet many happy customers there. Remember only hosts that are confident with their services and have many customers dare to set up an open forum. Currently, the forum has more than 11,000 registered users.
5. Live Chat - This is not the normally seen 1 on 1 live chat but a chat room. Instead of chatting with only 1 person, you can actually chat with a few support staff that are available in the chat room! Not only the support staff will hang around in the chat room, but also some of the LunarPages members! You can head in and ask for their experience with LunarPages. The live chat is accessible by clicking on the "Click Here for Live Chat" link on top of LunarForums.
We will surely rate their customer support as 10 over 10, or 11 over 10 if we can :-) Their customer satisfaction speaks for itself. We always stress to our visitors who write to us that if they are web hosting newbie who require a lot of attentions and supports, they should always pick LunarPages. This will make sure that they are fully taken care of in their "early age".
Important Highlights
Up to Date Software
Compared to other hosts in the top 10, LunarPages is the most effective in keeping their software up to date. Software that we are referring to include PHP, PHPMyAdmin, MySQL, Perl, Linux Kernel and others. This is one of the reasons why we rank them so high. It is very frustrating when you realize that your host is not updating their software.
CPanel Control Panel
LunarPages uses CPanel as the web site control panel. Another popular control panel is Plesk. But from our experience, CPanel is far more user friendly and powerful then Plesk. It allows you to control a lot of things, including email accounts, MySQL databases, custom error messages, password protected directories, setting up forum, shopping cart, chat room, cron jobs, sub domains, MIME types, apache handlers, search engine submission, free CGI scripts and many more. You can even upload and manage your files with its powerful file manager. What we really want you to know is that you can do a lot with CPanel and have a lot of fun with it. There are no such things as setting up forum or cron jobs in Plesk. Plesk control panel is also very slow to load even with a broadband Internet connection.
Fantastico Scripts Library
You can install 37 different scripts to your website INSTANTLY with a few clicks! No installation or programming language required. These scripts include blogs, discussion forums, portals, image galleries, polls, customer support scripts and a lot more.
Sub-Domains and Domain Pointers
You can create up to 15 sub domains and 3 domain pointers (domain alias/parking) for FREE. For example, we create the sub domain webdesigners.10-cheapwebhosting.com for our small web designers directory. Domain pointers and add-on domains are different. A domain pointer/alias is merely a second name for your website. Both domain point to the same website. An add-on domain is actually a second website. Both domain point to 2 different websites. They will share the same resources in one hosting account.
Web Statistics Referrals
Referrals allow you to know where your visitors come from (i.e. which site or search engine sent them to your site). They configure their web stats to show up to 250 of your web site referrals. More referrals mean more information. Almost all other web hosts configure their stats program to list only the top 30 referrals.
Flash Video Tutorials
You can enjoy learning by watching video tutorials instead of reading boring text tutorials. These tutorials include changing nameservers, working with CPanel, setting up your email client, uploading your site with FTP, using Dreamweaver MX, using Macromedia Flash and using Microsoft FrontPage.
PHP & MySQL Platform
LunarPages offers a very good platform for PHP and MySQL. They do a great job on keeping both software up to date. With PHPMyAdmin pre-installed, you can manipulate your MySQL database easily through the web-based interface. As you can see, we use PHP and MySQL extensively in our site. We use MySQL to store all the information about the web hosting plans. We use PHP to write scripts that search the database, compare plans and display the plan information. You are even allowed to connect to LunarPages MySQL server remotely using MySQL monitor or other MySQL remote connect tool, or even a self-written PHP script on your local computer!
Order Process
They will set up your account the same day of your order. Please make sure you include a reachable telephone number, as they will call you to confirm your order (even if you live outside of the USA). Once they have confirmed your order by phone, your account will be set up in 15 minutes. Our site was set up in five! They will confirm orders on weekends as well.
Server Information
LunarPages has more than 80 live servers for web hosting. Every month, they will add around 4 new servers to their server farm. New customers will most likely be placed on the new servers because they have the most resources. They are using Dell PowerEdge 2650 Servers powered by dual Intel Xeon 2.8GHz processors, 4 GB of memory and 3 x 80 GB RAID 5 SCSI drives. Each server cost more than $10,000! Backup of all servers is performed in a daily basis.
Our Final Advice
If you really took the time to read our review until here, we believe you are serious in looking for the best web host. You are doing a great job by reaching us and we know you really deserve the best! We have been monitoring LunarPages for over 2 years now and we can assure you that they are the BEST you can ever find. You may want to read iPowerWeb review and Globat review for comparison, although in our experience, LunarPages is the way to go! You will get your best hosting experience from them.
Bottom line: Lunarpages is one of the few web hosting companies that have a very generous hosting offer and do provide what they promise. The owner, Maximiliam Andersen, is a standup guy and he has a good reputation at WHT. He definitely knows how to run his business and he's not afraid to advertise alot, all over the internet. If the cost is a big issue and you are looking for a reliable budget hosting. then LunarPages might be right for you.
Latest Update
23 Dec 2004 - Reached 70,000 customers.
08 Dec 2004 - 6 new servers installed! (named Chara, Fomax, Ganymede, Halley, Sputnik & Hercules). All are Dell servers powered by dual Xeon 2.8GHz processors, 4 GB of memory and 3 x 80 GB Raid SCSI drive.
