Truehost.co.za review

First impression

Truehost.co.za is a South African web hosting company established in 2016 by David Murimi, a Kenyan entrepreneur with a Bachelor's degree in civil engineering and the founder of Olitt, a website building service, and Ryanada, a software company. They provide different kinds of hosting like Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Domain Registration to clients all over the world. 

Trial Period

Unfortunately, they don't provide any free trial periods where you can experiment with their services and see if they fit your hosting needs. However, they do provide a 30-day money-back guarantee for their Shared Hosting. It is very fascinating to learn that the policy only covers their errors or server outages. If you're not happy and you want to cancel, the refund policy does not cover this.

Billing Cycle

Truehost clients can register for monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly, biennial, and 36-month plans. The longer the period, the discount is offered, but the value of the discount is subject to change in the future.

They accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, and PayPal as payments.

Control Panel

Their Shared Hosting plans utilize the cPanel control panel, a very well-known and popular web-based hosting provider interface. It provides users with an easy-to-use interface for managing their hosting accounts without having to possess in-depth technical skills. Or, their VPS plans provide users with the option of utilizing CyberPanel, CWP (CentOS Web Panel), or cPanel (though cPanel comes with an added cost on VPS).

Limits

Truehost hosting plans, i.e., Shared Hosting and VPS, are extremely affordable and are based on high-speed SSD drives. Their Shared Hosting plans include four scalable plans: Truehost Silver SSD Hosting, Truehost Gold SSD Hosting, Truehost Ecommerce Lite Hosting, and Truehost Platinum SSD Hosting. The 'Silver' plan begins with 30GB SSD storage, 1024MB RAM, and 80% CPU usage allocation. The second, the 'Gold' plan includes 50GB SSD storage, 1536MB RAM, and 120% CPU usage allocation. The 'Ecommerce' plan includes a dedicated 1x vCore CPU, 50GB SSD storage, and 2GB RAM, while the 'Platinum' plan includes unlimited SSD storage, 150% CPU usage allocation, and 2048MB RAM. Unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts, MySQL databases, Sub-Domains, and 99.999% uptime guaranteed are included with all Shared Hosting plans.

Their Linux VPS packages are available in various configurations. From the Tcloud VPS 1 (Litespeed) package with 30GB SSD storage, 1GB RAM, and 1x 3GHz vCore CPUs, to the Tcloud VPS 4 (Litespeed) package with 200GB SSD storage, 8GB RAM, and 4x 3GHz vCore CPUs. And for Windows, packages range from the Apps VPS Windows 1 package with 40GB SSD storage, 2GB RAM, and 1x 3.1GHz vCore CPU, to the Apps VPS Windows 3 package with 160GB SSD storage, 8GB RAM, and 4x 3.1GHz vCore CPUs. 

Website Builder

They include the Olitt website builder, another David Murimi creation, for free in their Shared Hosting Plans. The website builder includes a drag-and-drop system which makes it easy for users to create and construct websites without necessarily knowing how to code or design. It contains a number of templates and styles to allow users to create professional-looking websites quick and easy. It might be simple but it gets the job done.

Security

For security you're pretty much on your own, as they offer only a network firewall, a bridge between their servers and unwanted internet traffic, and a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. But since their prices are dirt cheap, can one blame them for not offering fundamental features such as DDoS protection, Anti-Virus, and Anti-Spam protection? Probably not, though I believe this should be pretty standard nowadays.

Then, there are higher-level SSL certificates such as AskSSL Starter, Sectigo PositiveSSL, RapidSSL, and GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium that can be bought. 

OS

Truehost.co.za provides several operating systems for their VPS Hosting packages. These operating systems are alternate Linux distributions like CentOS 6.9, 7.0, 7.8, 7.9, and 8.2, Ubuntu 18.04, 19.04, and 20.04, Debian 9.4, 10, and 11, AlmaLinux 8.3 and 8.4, Fedora 34, RockyLinux 8.4, Suse 15.1, and Webuzo 7.8 and 18.04. For Windows packages, they provide Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2022 operating systems. For Shared Hosting, they provide CentOS 7 as the default operating system.

Support

Their support reps are 24/7 available through Phone, Email, Live Chat, and WhatsApp. My experience was that it was hard to work with these reps at best because they were poorly trained or even apparently too much of a hassle to assist. There were usually long waits, with Live Chat taking minutes many times, sometimes more than 10 between responses. Probably some of the worst support I have ever had.

Conclusion

Truehost provides cheap hosting plans with excellent quality of support and uptime guarantees, but my experience fell short of the guarantees, unfortunately. I was not impressed with the level of expertise in my experience with their support team. Subpar customer support is a deal-breaker no matter the pricing and hosting plan structure for me personally. If you're in the market for a new service provider, pay a bit more to receive the service you deserve.