THCServers.com review

First Impressions

THC Servers is a 100% privately owned hosting services provider that was founded by 2 friends while still in college, who had a vision of providing a platform so that anyone can establish a web presence that is both affordable and reliable. This provider has grown tremendously since their humble beginnings and now consist of a team of 16 hosting professionals, administrators, web developers, and designers. They run their operations out of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the United States, and serve more than 15,500 seemingly happy clients on a daily basis. THC Servers offer a range of hosting services such as shared hosting, dedicated servers, anonymous VPS plans (out of their Netherlands data centers), dedicated WordPress hosting, SSL certificates, as well as domain registrations.

Trial Period

Unfortunately, this hosting provider doesn’t offer any free trials so that potential customers can first try them out before they sign up, however, they are currently running a promotion on their dedicated servers – if you buy 1 month, you get the next at 10% off using the coupon code SPECIAL10OFF. Furthermore, all their plans come standard with a 30-day money back guarantee, so if you signed up and they don’t live up to your expectations, simply cancel your plan within the first 30 days for a full refund – no questions asked!

Billing Cycle

When it comes to billing, all their products offer different subscription lengths. Their shared hosting plans are available in monthly, semi-annual, and annual subscription, VPS plans offer the choice between either monthly or yearly commitments, and their dedicated server plans are only available in monthly billing.

They currently accept PayPal, Bitcoin, Altcoins, PaysafeCard, Perfect Money, as well as Visa, Mastercard and Diners Club cards as valid payment methods.

Control Panel

To manage your hosting plan, they keep things pretty straightforward. On their shared hosting plans users get the hugely popular, industry standard cPanel control panel bundled with Softaculous, and on their VPS plans they include the VirtFusion control panel. This lesser-known panel comes with a feature-rich virtualization management platform that was built specifically for hosting providers and service professionals to simplify the administration of KVM-based virtual machines. On the THC dedicated servers they don’t include any free control panels, but you get full root access and can install your own.

Limits

THC Server’s shared hosting plans are available in four affordable options. These plans range from the “Geek”, their entry-level option, which comes with a 1 domain limit, 5x POP/IMAP email accounts, and only 2GB of SSD disk space, for only $2.95 per month, up to the “Freak” plan, which boasts 100x POP/IMAP email accounts, and 100GB super-fast SSD disk space for $19.95 per month. In my opinion, the first two plans are only suitable for nothing more than a personal blog, or small static website, as the space they include is very little. All these plans run on lightning-fast SSD disk drives, and come standard with DDoS protection, free daily backups, a free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt, and carry a 99.99% uptime guarantee, which for those that don’t know, is much better than the industry average.

Their VPS plans on the other hand offer multiple options, available in both Linux (5 options) and Windows (4 options). These servers are all on a RAID 10 configuration, and plans come with full root access, a dedicated IPv4 address, plenty of OS options, and are super affordable – even cheaper than what some providers charge for their shared hosting plans!

Website Builder

If you were hoping to get a free dedicated website builder included in your hosting plan with THC Servers, you are out of luck! They don’t offer any kind of website builder as standard, however, their shared hosting plans does include Softaculous, which has one-click installations for most of the popular CMS (content management systems) such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, and with these one can create a professional looking website without much effort and with zero coding skills.

Security

This is an area where I feel THC Servers get the basic right but still leaves a lot of room for improvement. All their plans come with DDoS attack protection, but it is the basic protection and not advanced protection. They also include a free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt and run daily backups on their shared hosting plans, but that is about it. There is no mention of any free anti-virus or malware software, or even a web application firewall (WAF) anywhere. Their prices are super low so one can hardly expect them to include much more for free, but I still feel this is an area where they can improve on.

OS

THC Server’s shared hosting plans all run on the Cloud Linux operating system (OS), a very stable and secure OS that isolates each user account into its own “Lightweight Virtual Environment” (LVE). Their VPS plans on the other hand offer a wide variety to choose from, such as Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and various Windows server editions. But it is worth noting that you don’t choose the OS during checkout, but rather after your server was provisioned.

Support

This is such an important section because sooner or later everyone runs into trouble, and then you need quick and capable support to assist. Luckily, THC Servers don't disappoint! In my experience, their agents were quick to reply, almost instant on live chat and within minutes on support tickets. The only downside is that these are the only two channels available to reach them, but they are available 24/7.

Conclusion

Personally, I would say that THC Servers is an excellent choice if you are on the hunt for a new provider that is affordable and very reliable, but it depends on what you are after. If you are a newbie or looking to host a small personal or business website, then their shared hosting plans are perfect, but for anything else, such as an eCommerce site or busy business website, you will have to look at their VPS plans as their shared hosting options won’t cut it. Security is basic too, so if this is important to you, you might need to either fork out a few more dollars yourself to upgrade the security or look for another provider. All things considered, I feel they are worth checking out!