PlanetHoster.com review

PlanetHoster discounts and promo codes

First impression

PlanetHoster is a Web Hosting provider and Domain Name Registrar that was established back in 2007 in Laval, Montreal, Canada and is currently headed by Mina Shenouda, who also happens to be one of the co-founders. They offer comprehensive and feature-packed hosting services that include Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, and Cloud Hosting, and serve over 150,000 customers around the globe from their environmentally friendly data centers, located in Montreal, Canada, and Paris, France.

They are accredited by ICANN, CIRA, VeriSign, PCI, DNsbe, DNslu, Eurid, and Switch, to name just a few, and offer support in both French and English.

Trial Period

PlanetHoster doesn’t offer a free trial period on any of their hosting plans, however, they do have a 30-day money-back guarantee on their Shared Hosting, and 14 days on VPS plans. Should you want to cancel for whatever reason and still fall within the initial 30 days, they will issue a full refund, at the latest within fourteen days after the day they are informed.

This guarantee does not apply to domain registrations.

Billing Cycle

They offer plans that are fairly priced and jam-packed with features. Customers will have the option to choose between paying biannually, annually, for 2 years, or 3 years, when they sign up, with a slight discount being offered on longer commitments.

Currently, PlanetHoster accepts PayPal, all major Credit Cards, as well as Wire Transfers as valid forms of payment. 

One should note though that Wire Transfers can take up to 72 hours to be processed. 

Control Panel

Their shared hosting uses the “N0C Control Panel”, a custom-built panel to meet the unique needs of all web professionals. This panel has been built with modern programming languages, and PlanetHoster even claims it to be faster, and much lighter than cPanel.

VPS plans however come standard with the ever-popular cPanel. 

Limits

Their Shared Hosting offers customers one plan where users can create multiple web hosting accounts, all sharing the same resources, while being 100% isolated at the same time. The configuration starts with 8 CPUs, 16GB RAM, running on Apache with Litespeed / LSCache acceleration, and is scalable to fit your specific needs.

Dedicated Server plans come in three options namely, Starter, Recommended, and Powerful. Starter features 2 CPUs, 4GB RAM, and 60GB SSD disc space, Recommend has 4 CPUs, 8GB RAM, and 90GB space, whilst Powerful boasts 24 CPUs, 16GB RAM, and 120GB storage. As with their Shared Hosting, these aren’t set in stone and can be customized.

Unlimited SSD disc space, bandwidth, MariaDB databases, email accounts, as well as twice-daily backups, and SSL certificates, come included as standard on all PlanetHoster plans.

Website Builder

PlanetHoster includes the SitePad website builder free of charge on their Shared Hosting plans. It offers users an easy-to-use builder that converts your drag-and-drop commands into code, creating a beautiful and responsive website quickly and without any coding knowledge. This builder comes with over 500 themes, 40+ widgets and will optimize your website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) automatically.

Security

PlanetHoster takes the security of its infrastructure and hosting platforms very seriously with numerous internal security protocols. Their data centers are hosted within highly secure, TIER III, TIER IV, ISO9001:2008, ISO50001:2011, ISAE3402, and PCI-DSS accredited facilities, and all accounts are fully protected from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) brute force attacks. 

Besides their own web anti-malware suite, they also run ClamAV, an open-source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats, on their servers. This acts as double malware protection, keeping all hosting accounts running smoothly.

In addition to the above measures, 2FA protection is available via the Google Authenticator app, as well as free SSL certificates by Let's Encrypt (with automatic installation and renewal).

OS

PlanetHoster makes use of the CentOs Operating System (which stands for Community Enterprise Operating System), on their servers. This Linux-based OS is a free and open-source community-supported computing platform.

Support

Round-the-clock support is available via Live Chat (with near-instant responses in my case), Email, or a ticketing system in the member's area. Their agents are professional, eager to assist, and offer help in both English and French.

A pretty decent knowledge base with Web Hosting tutorials, Guides, and frequently asked questions can be viewed on their website.

Conclusion

A solid hosting company that excels in each and every department. They offer well-packaged, performance-driven, and scalable plans, complemented with excellent support. The only drawback for me personally is that they cater more to the French and Canadian markets at the moment, and no free CDN (content delivery network) is included, something that could have addressed this issue if you are looking at hosting from another country. But that being said it doesn't stop you from subscribing to another CDN provider yourself. PlanetHoster is a  great hosting option for all types of businesses.