HostGrid review: the new kid on the block

HostGrid was a relatively new entry in the web hosting industry with attractive entry prices, reliable performance, and beginner-friendly management.

Yet, the provider has recently come out with a statement that they’re closing their services. Naturally, users are looking for an equal or even better hosting solution.

Luckily, the market is full of high-quality hosting alternatives, such as Hostinger, that offers advanced security features and professional customer support – something that HostGrid lacked.

But if you’re still interested to learn what this provider was all about, continue reading to find our extensive research findings. You’ll find everything from its performance to security, prices, and more.

⭐ Rating:	3.8 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
💵 Price:	From $1.99/month
📑 Uptime guarantee:	100%
⚙️ Hosting types:	Shared, WordPress, and Premium
🌎 Server locations:	The US
👨‍💻 24/7 live support:	Yes
🔥 Coupons:	Best hosting coupons

Pros and Cons of HostGrid

HostGrid pricing & plans

HostGrid’s most sought-after solution is shared hosting – of which it only has 1 plan that’s priced at a very cheap $1.99/month. Its only 2 other options are WordPress hosting and premium hosting. However, the renewal would be around 5 times that. Its only 2 other options were WordPress hosting and premium hosting.

In any case, the most popular (shared) plan came with unlimited disk space and bandwidth, free domain, SSL, email addresses, a site builder, and marketing tools. The resources offered are certainly very generous considering the plan is only $1.99/month.

Even though HostGrid is closing down, it wasn’t the only high-quality hosting provider that's cheap. You can find the best hosting alternatives down below.

Provider	Hostinger	Bluehost	DreamHost	SiteGround	HostGator
Brand
Price range	From $2.69/mo	From $1.99/mo	From $1.99/mo	From $1.99/mo	From $3.75/mo
Speed	511ms	361ms	231ms	217ms	525ms
Uptime	99.9%	99.9%	>100%	99.9%	>99.9%
Data center location	Yes, 7	US only	US only	Yes, 5	US only
Shared hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
WordPress hosting	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Free SSL	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Free domain	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅
Review	Hostinger review	Bluehost review	DreamHost review	SiteGround review	HostGator review

All things considered, HostGrid was a truly affordable hosting provider. While there wasn’t much flexibility in terms of plans, it was possible to get a plan with generous resources for a reasonable price.

Hosting management – is HostGrid easy to use?

For hosting management, HostGrid uses a combination of a native dashboard and a Plesk control panel. Both interfaces are very easy to use and intuitive enough even for newbies. Most importantly, they’re functional and house all the tools and features you need to run a website.

Upon login, you’ll first encounter the main dashboard. This is what it looks like:

As you can see, the management features are all neatly-organized and clustered on the left. This includes domain names and email addresses configurations as well as the marketplace.

Meanwhile, there’s no way you’ll miss the shortcuts to Plesk control panel management modules, as it’s right there, smack dab in the center of the dashboard. Just one click and you’re there.

Overall, the native dashboard is clean, fresh, and very easy to navigate. There’s virtually no learning curve since everything is intuitive. No doubt a relief to beginners and those who are less tech-savvy.

But, for those who want or need advanced functionalities, you want to make your way to Plesk.

If you’re familiar with Plesk, you’ll notice that HostGrid’s version is somewhat different from the usual Plesk interface. That’s because it’s integrated with HostGrid’s branding. In simple words, HostGrid has dressed standard Plesk in its own custom skin.

In any case, the interface still bears a heavy resemblance to the default version. And, it’s every bit as straightforward and user-friendly. In fact, the entire panel is very minimalistic and clean to make navigation easier.

To your left, you’ll find a menu with all the functionalities you need to run a website. They’re well organized under different categories, including applications, files, databases, and WordPress.

Speaking of WordPress, it’s a category of its own on the Plesk interface and a very functional one at that. Here, you have a clear overview of your WordPress status, including whether your plugins and themes are up-to-date.

More importantly, there are various tools for you to configure almost every aspect of your WordPress site. For instance, file manager, updates, themes and plugins, and database. Plus, there’s even a security checklist to ensure that you’ve taken all the necessary steps to keep your site safe and protected.

As a whole, HostGrid’s custom dashboard integrated with Plesk is everything you want to see in a hosting management system. The pair is easy to use, intuitive, and powerful, which, together, makes the site management process a breeze.

Performance – is HostGrid fast?

When it comes to performance, HostGrid is a little bit of a mixed bag. The host is extremely reliable in terms of uptime and harbors pretty good speed, however, its traffic-handling abilities could be better.

And since HostGrid is closing down, here’s how it looks stacked up to other hosts in terms of average response time:

Provider	Average response time
Hostinger	511ms 🏆
HostGator	525ms
HostGrid	763ms
Bluehost	971ms

HostGrid uptime and response time

For the first test, we monitored HostGrid for a month. During this period, the provider maintained an incredible 100% uptime with 0 outages and downtime. That is far better than the 99.9% uptime guarantee stated in its Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Of course, such perfect uptime is quite impossible to keep long-term. But, it does speak volumes about HostGrid’s reliability and good server health.

Now talking about the response time, HostGrid has averaged out at 763ms. While that’s far from terrible, it’s also not the best either as the market average for shared hosting is 600ms.

That said, this is just a bare server without optimizations just yet. Plus, to give credits to HostGrid, its response times were pretty consistent and steady throughout the period.

Overall, HostGrid’s uptime is very impressive, while the response time could use some improvement.

HostGrid hosting speed

For the second test, we decided to see how fast HostGrid is in terms of site loading speed. The test was conducted on both empty and fully built websites.

To better read the results, there are 2 measures you should evaluate – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Fully Loaded Time.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a measure that Google takes into account when ranking sites on its search result page. For best results, this measure should be no higher than 600ms for an empty and 2.5s for a fully built site.
• Fully Loaded Time, as the name suggests, is the time it takes for the site to fully load all elements. For the best user experience and lowest bounce rates aim for anything less than 3 seconds.

Well, our empty WordPress website’s LCP took 729ms. Obviously not ideal, still pretty good compared with some of its peers. The Fully Loaded Time, in this case, is just 783ms, and that’s mainly due to the fact that there are almost no elements on the site.

Once we moved on to see how it fares for a built WordPress site, HostGrid demonstrated an LCP of 1.9s. Understandably it is higher than with an empty page, yet it does fall under the unwanted 2.5s mark. This means that the site stands a good chance of ranking higher on search engines’ results pages.

Plus, we kept an eye out for its Fully Loaded Time, which came at just 2 seconds. Loads of wiggle space until you hit that undesired 3-second mark too.

In short, HostGrid delivers pretty good speed results. The provider might not compete with the fastest hosting providers in the market, but the results are good enough to not raise any concern at all.

HostGrid stress testing

Our final test is a stress test that aims to see what kind of traffic intensity HostGrid can accommodate.

As a starting point, we sent 50 virtual users (VUs) its way, which proved to be too much for the host. However, we were still curious to see how much is not too much anymore.

Therefore, we ran the test again and again by lowering the number of VUs by 5. The first success was with 15 VUs.

This time around, there were no failed requests (red line), which is a great sign. While the response time (blue line) was not the most stable, it also remained reasonably good in contrast to the rising VUs number (gray line).

Keep in mind that 50VUs on a website every minute for a month would result in around 50 000 monthly visits. That’s intense traffic that not every shared hosting provider can handle. So simply put, 15 VUs, which could result in ~15 000 monthly visits is still pretty good traffic that can be expected from popular blogs or small business sites.

All things considered, we’d like to see some improvement in HostGrid’s performance. While its reliability is impeccable and the site’s loading speed is good, its server responsiveness and traffic handling abilities could be better.

Security – is HostGrid secure?

When it comes to security, HostGrid keeps things very bare and you won’t see the full stack. Instead, it only offers a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, automated backups, and firewalls and that’s about it. Other options are only available as paid add-ons.

Let’s go through the free security measures first:

• SSL certificates – HostGrid includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to help encrypt the connection between your site and your visitors. We’d consider this the bare minimum for a host but it’s still a welcomed sight.
• Automated backups – the provider offers automated daily backups that can be saved for up to 4 weeks.
• Firewalls – these server-level firewalls help to filter out malicious traffic from reaching the server and your site.

And, that’s all you get from HostGrid for free. While all these are very much appreciated, we would expect the host to offer a more rounded security package.

Now, if you’re willing to open up your wallet, HostGrid also offers a few paid extras. This includes automated updates and security patches, managed SSL, and advanced server monitoring.

All in all, HostGrid offers only the most basic security features, which definitely won’t land it among the most secure hosting providers. However, if you’re willing to spend some extra, the host has a few additional features to offer.

Will HostGrid support help me?

HostGrid support team is available 24/7 via live chat, email, and phone – with its live chat reserved only for billing and tech support questions. Besides that, there’s also a knowledge base with articles covering a variety of topics.

Our preferred support channel is live chat and we’ve tried it our multiple times. From our experience, the response times tend to be quick. But, the last time we reached out, our chat with the agent was abruptly disconnected. Luckily, the same agent joined the new chat and we were able to solve the issue pretty quickly.

As an alternative to the live chat, email, or phone, you could also head to HostGrid’s knowledge base. But, fair warning: it appears that for now at least, there are only articles on 3 topics: hosting, billing support, and technical support.

Within these 3 topics, there are dozens of articles on domains, WordPress, Plesk, troubleshooting, and more. On the plus side, these articles are well-written and structured for easy reading. At the same time, they could be more detailed. However, since the provider is still in its infant stage, we're sure that it’s just a matter of time until they get it right.

Keen to help, knowledgeable, and quickly accessible, we'd say that HostGrid’s support is very good. But, there’s still room for improvement – especially with its knowledge base.

Alternatives to HostGrid

HostGrid certainly isn’t lacking in appeal and charm. That said, you might not find it to be a good fit for you or your website. Or, perhaps it lacks certain features that you absolutely need. In that case, I’ve handpicked 2 alternatives for you.

Bluehost

Bluehost is a massive name in the industry and is popular for its WordPress-centered hosting solutions. With hosting plans starting at a very affordable $1.99/month and a laser-sharp focus on beginner-friendliness, the provider is often the first provider in many users’ hosting journey.

Meanwhile, more experienced users would appreciate its cPanel integration as well as rich business tools that are accessible via its dashboard. Moreover, Bluehost shines when it comes to performance, too. The host is extremely reliable with a trustworthy uptime and reasonably fast speed results.

Visit Bluehost

Hostinger

Hostinger is great if we’re talking about good quality web hosting at affordable prices, with its plans starting at just $2.69/month. The popular host isn’t as liberal with its resources but it’s much more comprehensive and generous with its features and tools.

Additionally, the host is also well-known for offering easy hosting management via its hPanel as well as boasting a very friendly and helpful support team. Plus, its excellent performance with 100% uptime and data centers in 7 locations around the world is certainly a huge pull, too.

Visit Hostinger

HostGrid review – the final verdict

As a whole, this HostGrid review confirms that the provider was a good choice for many users. This includes beginners, budget-seekers, and small website creators. However, it’s true that the host also wasn’t perfect nor is it as smooth as the more established names.

Since the service is closing, Hostinger is the best alternative for HostGrid users. Its plans are very affordable and flexible, starting at $2.69/month, it offers generous resources, and ensures reliable customer service.

HostGrid FAQs