SkyHost.pk review

First impression

SkyHost is a well-known web hosting company established by Adeel Nawaz in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Their services, aimed at the local market, consist of Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Server hosting, in addition to Domain Registrations and SSL Certificates. They started out in 2012 with a few clients and have now expanded to host over 20,000 apparently satisfied customers from all around the world.

Trial Period

Sadly, SkyHost does not offer a free trial period in which you get to play around with their services. But they do have a 10-day money-back guarantee on their hosting packages, so new clients get to try out their services with the ability to get a refund for their money if they are not satisfied within this time frame. Note that this guarantee does not cover VPS Servers, Dedicated Servers, Software / Script Licenses, and SSL Certificates.

Billing Cycle

SkyHost offers shared hosting customers three billing options: yearly, bi-yearly (with a 10% discount), and tri-yearly (with a 20% discount). The billing cycles are more flexible with the VPS plans, with monthly, quarterly, six-monthly, and yearly plans. The various options enable customers to choose the plan that best fits their business and finances.

Payment options accepted by SkyHost are comprehensive, making it easy for a diverse set of clientele to pay. They range from major credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express) to PayPal, EasyPaisa, MobiCash, UBL Bank Deposits, 1 Link ATM Transfers, and to my surprise, even cash or cheques payment at their office.

Control Panel

Their shared hosting accounts, which come in both Linux and Windows varieties, feature the cPanel control panel with Linux-based accounts and the Plesk control panel with Windows-based accounts. Their VPS accounts feature a variety of control panel options. These include VestaCP, known for its flexibility and extensive range of free features; Sentora, designed to be lightweight and efficient for small to medium-sized web hosting providers; and CWP (CentOS Web Panel), a free control panel for managing servers running CentOS, Red Hat, and CloudLinux. Additionally, customers can choose cPanel or Plesk for VPS plans at an additional monthly fee.

Limits

SkyHost Shared Hosting plans, all on NVMe SSD high-speed drives and Quad Core Servers, come in a range of scalable versions. The options begins with the Starter plan that provides 5GB NVMe SSD disk space, 1x vCore CPU, 2GB RAM, 5x MySQL databases, and unlimited POP/IMAP mailboxes, and is suitable for static websites and dynamic websites. Their highest-end plan, the Unlimited-4, offers up to 750GB NVMe storage capacity, 4x vCore CPUs, 6GB RAM, and unlimited MySQL databases and POP/IMAP email accounts. All plans under Shared Hosting offer unlimited bandwidth, a free domain (.com,.net, or.org), and a free SSL certificate by Let's Encrypt.

Their VPS plans, however, also provide a range of choices. Beginning with the Cloud VPS-1 plan, which comes with 1x vCore, 2GB RAM, 25GB SSD storage, and 1 dedicated IP. The Cloud VPS-10 plan at the opposite end provides 4x vCore CPUs, 20GB RAM, 250GB SSD storage, and 1 dedicated IP. Similar to Shared Hosting plans, VPS plans also provide unlimited bandwidth as one of the standard features.

Website Builder

Unfortunately, SkyHost does not offer a website builder with their web hosting plans. They focus primarily on providing comprehensive web hosting services such as Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Servers. They do, however, offer easy installation of popular CMS software such as WordPress through Softaculous, which allows for speedy website setup and management, though this is not quite the same as a specialized website builder tool.

Security

All of their data centers are rated Tier 4, certified as completely fault-tolerant, with redundancy across all components, including power supply. Their platform is protected using additional security mechanisms, including network firewalls, protection against DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks, and server monitoring 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for minimizing potential vulnerabilities and ensuring uptimes. User accounts feature anti-malware and anti-virus software, free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt, and brute-force attack protection.

OS

SkyHost Shared Hosting plans are driven by the AlmaLinux operating system (OS), which is a stable and community-driven alternative to CentOS, and ideal for users and organizations that need RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) compatibility without any cost. Their VPS plans do, nevertheless, give users a choice of installing CentOS 6.9, 7.0, 7.3, 7.5, 8, Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, Fedora 27, Debian 10, openSUSE 12.2, or Windows 10 / Windows Server 2012 & 2016 for Windows.

Support

SkyHost offers support around the clock via Live Chat, Phone, Email, and a Ticketing System. Personally, I found their ticketing system to be the preferred method, as I received responses and solutions to my issues in less than 5 minutes. In contrast, their Live Chat took well over an hour each time I attempted to contact them through that channel. However, the agents are very well-trained, courteous, and helpful. If you like to rectify errors yourself, a good knowledge base is present on their website.

Conclusion

SkyHost's mix of performance, security, scalability, support options, and features make it a sound decision for individuals and businesses in need of solid web hosting services. They've got great uptime, their support team is courteous and willing to help, and I like that they've updated all of their storage to speedy SSD drives. It's a great all-around choice for those who need budget-friendly but dependable hosting.