Icdsoft.com review

ICDSoft company was founded in 2001. They provide shared, reseller and VPS hosting as well as other services, such as domain registration, SSL certificates and a website builder. They do not provide Dedicated servers at the moment.

Registration process

In order to register an account, you need to purchase a hosting package firstly. During step 2 you need to fill in your personal information and billing address. The whole registration process takes 3-5 minutes.

Support

The company provides 24/7 chat and ticket support. In order to submit a ticket, you need to be logged in to your client account. The representatives are quick and accurate. The average response time in both chat and tickets does not exceed 15-20 minutes.

The knowledge base contains all of the required information.

Shared hosting 

Packages

The company offers a few types of shared hosting packages:

• Web Hosting. You can choose between Economy, Business and Business Plus packages. All of the packages include a nice amount of disk space and bandwidth. Though, it should be noted that these packages do not support WebApps. This means that you cannot run background processes such as Node.js or Django.
• WordPress hosting. These packages are quite similar to the Web Hosting ones, however, they are optimized for WordPress. 
• Node.js Hosting. These packages are a bit different than the other two types. Node.js hosting packages are more expensive, however, they include WebApps support. Moreover, with them you get more CPU minutes, a dedicated RAM and Supervisor service that will monitor your server/daemon processes, and will make sure they run all the time.

ICDSoft offers up to 75% discount for shared hosting packages. It is eligible only for the first year. The regular price is higher than average: from $6.40 to $40 per month. The package descriptions are very detailed and contain all of the necessary information.

You can choose the server  location (USA, Europe and Hong Kong) for each package. 

Control Panel

The company offers a custom-built control panel. You can access it through your client area. The panel itself is quite easy, comfortable and intuitive. All of the necessary options such as PHP Settings, File Manager, Cron Jobs and Mail Manager, are located in the home page as well as the resource usage statistics.

Trial period

ICDSoft does not offer a trial period. However, they have a 100-day money-back guarantee for all of their shared hosting packages, except Node.js. The latter ones can be refunded only within 15 days after the purchase.

Limits

This company provides a full list of the restrictions and limits in the plan description. To access them, click on “Compare plans”. 

Apart from those restrictions, ICDSoft prohibits hosting anonymous file sharing services, warez sites, adult content, and web-based shells . Also, the inode limit (number of files and folders) is restricted to 500 000.

Security and Backups

The company provides free daily backups for all of their shared hosting packages. They are stored for 7 days for Web Hosting and WordPress packages and for 15 days, if you own a Node.js package. You can also create an on-demand backup anytime in your control panel.

ICDSoft also offers a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and an antivirus for all of their packages. Your emails will be secured with an anti-spam tool. 

Additionally, you can purchase Advanced Security service at $99/year. This service includes daily malware scans, file change detection, security audit, blacklist removal, root cause investigation and other useful features.

Billing cycles

You can purchase a Web Hosting and WordPress package for 1-10 years, meaning that they have only yearly billing cycles. Node.js can be purchased for 1-24 months. 

Operating system

Shared hosting servers run on Debian, which is quite unusual as most servers nowadays run on either CentOS or CloudLinux.

Additional services

Domain registration

It’s possible to register the following TLDs:
.com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, .info, .eu, .de, .ca, .co.uk, .uk, .hk, .com.hk, .net.hk, .org.hk, .idv.hk,  .bg, .club. The pricing looks good.

SSL

Apart from offering a free SSL certificate for each hosting package, ICDSoft offers Geotrust and Sectigo certificates at quite affordable pricing.

Website builders

If you purchase a shared hosting package, you can advantage of using the following website builders:

• WordPress Website Builder - Elementor
• Online Ecommerce Platform - WooCommerce
• Drag-and-drop CMS with Built-in eCommerce - Microweber
• Desktop Website Builder - Mobirise

Mail

The company provides their own email services. It is included in each hosting package. There’s no information in the control panel that it is possible to use any other services such as RoundCube.

VPS 

Hardware

There is no specific information regarding the hardware. The support staff was also unable to disclose such information.

Packages

The company provides 5 packages for each server location: USA, Europe and Hong Kong. All of them are managed, meaning that you will not have root access and you will not be able to install any custom software, apart from a CMS. On the other hand, you don’t need to worry about server configuration and software updates. The servers are monitored 24/7. 

The servers run on Debian and include a custom-built control panel that was described above (in the shared hosting section). Also, each package includes 2 dedicated IP-addresses. 

The discounted pricing seems very low, however, the regular one is considerably higher than average. In addition, you can get a refund for the server within 15 days after the purchase. 

Conclusions 

Generally, the services of this certain provider look good. They offer nice discounts and a decent control panel for all of their packages. The only downpoint of the services is the lack of information regarding the VPS hardware as it makes it hard for me to estimate the price-quality ratio of the servers. 

The support team is very fast and eager to help, so this hosting would be a nice choice for both beginners and proficient users.