JustHost Web Hosting Review

JustHost is a US-based web hosting service that hosts over one million websites on its platform. It offers a number of payment plans, and has a reputation for being excellent value. It comes with a surprising number of features included in its most affordable plans.

It offers useful integration tools, such as WordPress and SiteLock that make it ideal for new businesses. However, it's not the most reliable web hosting out there, and you could easily find even better alternatives.

Best JustHost alternative

Bluehost is a WordPress-recommended web hosting solution, which makes it a perfect alternative to JustHost. What's more, Bluehost is affordable, easy to use, and includes a ton of freebies, such as free SSL certificates, free CDN, and even free domain registration for one year.

cybernews® score

4.9 /5

• WordPress-oriented
• Budget-friendly
• Automatic backups

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But how good is JustHost? Is it the best hosting platform for you? And how does it compare to other products on the market? For a full picture of what’s on offer, read on for everything you need to know.

The best alternatives to JustHost:

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★4.6/5

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Pros and Cons of JustHost

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Is it a good choice for businesses and developers?

On the surface, JustHost is a solid choice for small businesses, as well as for developers looking to get access to a number of free tools. It’s great for beginners, as it has an interface that makes site management easier than some of the more complex hosts out there.

But, while JustHost does offer some support options, its customer service has a reputation for being unreliable. However, considering it is one of the cheapest options available on the market, this isn’t exactly surprising. It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out and get a refund if you don’t like it.

What’s more troubling for a new business or professional web developer is the slow response time, which could be very off-putting for potential customers, and could lead to you losing business.

All in all, it’s not a bad option for new companies and small businesses on a tight budget. But its slow response will cause problems for larger websites. So, if you have the budget, we would recommend opting for a faster product, such as HostPapa or SiteGround.

What are JustHost’s pricing plans?

JustHost offers some of the cheapest hosting plans on the market, but only if you pay for three years up front. Let’s take a closer look at JustHost’s plans and pricing.

Web hosting options

JustHost web hosting options start with the Basic plan, which costs (at the time of writing) $3.95 per month. The more premium Plus and Choice Plus options currently cost $6.95 per month. It’s important to bear in mind though, that these are the prices if you sign up for three years with JustHost. It will cost you more if you sign up for monthly plans.

Of course, you need to bear in mind that if you want to go with monthly payments so that you can drop out if the services don’t suit you, you’ll be paying $14.99 per month for the basic plan.

VPS hosting

JustHost’s VPS hosting options all offer a free domain name and utilize cloud technology to allow future features to be added as they are developed. The Standard plan starts at $19.99 per month, Enhanced starts at $29.99 per month, the Premium plan costs $44.99 per month, and the Ultimate plan is $59.99 per month.

Once again, these are only the prices for if you are going to sign up for three years. If you want to pay monthly, it’ll cost you $29.99 per month for the standard package and $119.99 per month for the ultimate.

Dedicated Hosting

These dedicated web hosting options all use the same CentOS operating system. And, like the VPS and web hosting options, also include a free domain name. There are three plans: the Standard at $79.99 per month, the Enhanced at $99.99 per month, and the Premium plan at $119.99 per month.

But of course, that is only for the three-year deal. For monthly prices, you can sign up for $149.99 per month for the standard plan, or you can go for $249.99 per month for the premium plan.

What are JustHost’s hosting features?

JustHost offers a good number of key features, regardless of the plan you decide to go with. These hosting features can make it a lot easier to build, maintain and optimize your website.

JustHost cPanel and interface

The JustHost control panel is available to all JustHost customers, and provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage a number of aspects of your hosting account. In fact, the JustHost interface is one of its main advantages over other, more complex web hosting providers.

As a web hosting service that is best for new websites, the account management’s clear layout is a definite plus point for beginners.

Databases

Here are some of JustHost’s most popular services:

• Python
• Perl 5
• Ruby
• Javascript, DHTML, Flash and Shockwave support
• CGI-BIN and CGI Library
• MySQL: and PostgreSQL databases

As a new website or company, these are all the services you will need to get your site off the ground.

Cloudflare CDN

JustHost is compatible with Cloudflare, and it’s easy for those using shared plans to enable it via the JustHost control panel. Cloudflare is a free system that caches static content for your site, which can improve your site’s performance and help identify and stop malicious threats to your site.

CPU Protection

JustHost employs a system on its shared servers that monitors server resources, such as CPU and memory, to make sure each site on that server gets its fair share of those resources. This means that, in theory, it’s less likely that sites on the shared server will suffer from performance problems.

Simple WordPress installation

While JustHost doesn’t offer a managed WordPress hosting plan, it does make installing WordPress on your site extremely easy, so, for example, you can run a WordPress blog on JustHost. Once done, it’s also really straightforward to manage on your cPanel, with options to enable WordPress core, themes and plugins.

Weekly backups

Unfortunately, if you’re using a Basic hosting plan, which many small businesses may opt for, then backups need to be done manually. This means that you have to remember to do it yourself, or you will risk losing your data.

To get automatic backups for your site, you will need to sign up to the Choice Plus plan.

Easy-to-use website builder

JustHost offers the use of Weebly’s website builder, free of charge, to all customers.

A simple drag-and-drop page builder with hundreds of templates, Weebly is the ideal starting place for anyone who finds the idea of using WordPress or CMS a little daunting. It’s also a much cheaper option for those start-ups that aren’t ready to spend on a developer, or don’t have time to run a business and learn to code simultaneously.

Is it fast and reliable?

A fast and reliable server is arguably the most important thing to consider when choosing a web hosting service, as it will impact site performance and, in turn, the user experience. Unfortunately, JustHost has some serious problems in this department. Let’s take a closer look.

Server response speeds

In a test carried out in 2020-2021, the average response speed for JustHost was 971ms. Bear in mind that Google recommends that you aim for a speed of 200ms, and anything over 500ms is problematic. This means that sites hosted with JustHost are likely to have slow response times.

JustHost scores poorly for overall speed. It consistently underperforms in time to first byte. This means that your users might have to wait a while for your site to load.

Uptimes and downtimes

Uptime and downtime is a vitally important aspect of a web hosting service, and JustHost’s solid uptime of 99.95% over 12 months means that it meets the industry standard for keeping its sights live and running.

However, it is worth noting that JustHost does not offer compensation for any downtime. So you won’t get anything if your site goes down, even if you lose revenue as a result.

While JustHost has headquarters in the UK, the US and Australia, it has just one data center, which is based in Utah. Since its acquisition by Endurance International Group (EIG), it moved its data center from Illinois to improve its infrastructure, reliability and connectivity.

Justhost services and customer support

JustHost offers 24/7 chat, phone and email support, which sounds ideal for users who may be new to running an online business or their own website. However, JustHost’s existing users don’t seem to agree, as it currently has a woeful rating of just 1.2 stars on TrustPilot.

However, while this is off-putting, it’s worth noting that we got swift and helpful responses to queries during testing.

Free domain name for new accounts

Regardless of the hosting plan you choose, JustHost provides you with a free domain name, so that’s one less thing to worry about. But if you decide to cancel your account, you will be charged a $15 fee to keep your domain.

Phone support only for dedicated hosting customers

While chat and email is available for all customers on shared plans or VPS plans, only those with dedicated web hosting plans can access the 24/7 phone support. And while we didn’t encounter any issues during testing, online customer reviews are overwhelmingly negative about JustHost’s live chat and ticketing system.

Money-back guarantee

JustHost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy with the initial service. So you can try it out to see if you like it before signing up to a three-year contract to get the cheapest monthly rate. Of course, that doesn’t apply to your free domain name, which will cost you $15 to keep, even if you change your mind within 30 days.

JustHost alternatives

While JustHost has some excellent selling points, there are plenty of decent alternatives out there that provide the same service in a slightly different way. So, what are some of the other good options out there and how do they stack up against JustHost?

Bluehost

Bluehost is similarly priced as JustHost, with plans starting at $1.99/month, and both offer similar features like free SSL and domain registration. However, Bluehost provides better performance and uptime. It also offers more versatile hosting options, including shared, VPS, and managed WordPress hosting.

For beginners and small businesses, Bluehost is affordable, with superior features like automatic backups (on higher-tier plans) and an AI-powered website builder.

Choose Bluehost if: You want an affordable, feature-rich hosting solution.

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Hostinger

Hostinger is another budget-friendly option, with prices starting at $2.54/month. It provides fast, reliable hosting with features like free SSL, daily backups, and 100 GB SSD storage in its Premium plans.

Hostinger is an excellent option for users who want simplicity and performance at a low cost. It also offers cloud hosting and VPS plans at competitive prices, making it ideal for users looking for scalability.

Choose Hostinger if: You need a low-cost, easy-to-use hosting service with excellent speed and storage.

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Our verdict

While JustHost does have its benefits, including a decent uptime, good features and the options of VPS or dedicated hosting services, it falls behind when it comes to server response time. And despite its seemingly low prices, you’ll only actually get these if you sign up for a minimum of three years.

If you’re on a tight budget, JustHost is a reasonable option. However in our opinion, there are better options in this price range, such as Bluehost or Hostinger.

However, the slow response time is a real problem. And not including automatic backups as standard makes the cheaper plans a lot less attractive.

There are a number of web hosting options out there that provide really impressive speeds and top-quality customer service for only slightly more. And really, when it comes to your business, the performance of your website should be a top priority. We believe it’s not something worth compromising.

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