Formed in 2005, Web Hosting Pad comes across as a quite varyingly perceived web hosting service provider among its clients and counterparts alike. With a mind-staggering hosting price offered as low as just $1.99 per month, Web Hosting Pad surely qualifies as one of the cheapest shared hosting service providers across the Internet. A number of different integrated web hosting features along with efficiently split multi-subscription plans are defining features of Web Hosting Pad’s shared hosting services.

• 1 Year – Power Plan: $4.45/month | Power Plan Plus: $7.95/month
• 2 Years – Power Plan: $3.45/month | Power Plan Plus: $6.95/month
• 3 Years – Power Plan: $2.95/month | Power Plan Plus: $5.99/month
• 4 Years – Power Plan: $2.45/month | Power Plan Plus: $5.99/month
• 5 Years – Power Plan: $1.99/month (limited time offer)

Pricing

When you first notice the monthly web hosting subscription plan of just $1.99 (along with an offer of all the additional hosting services imaginable), it’s a rather intriguing sight. But given the endurance of staying loyal to this plan for 5 long years – and that too under the present service conditions – you would seriously want to rethink your initial reaction. The pricing structure, however, is very unique with no less than five different ‘Power’ plans to choose from. Going by the standard norms (which suggest availing a web hosting service on a yearly basis) the offer looks quite different to what you would normally see from similar hosting services.

Features

Web Hosting Pad supports a healthy pool of hosting services, which come at a fairly nominal price to the client. Along with unlimited web storage, web bandwidth, and unlimited add-on domains Web Hosting Pad has many more favorable hosting features to offer.

• Dual Xeon Intel Raid Protected Servers (with weekly backup support)
• Unlimited Hosting Space
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• Free Marketing Credits
• Free Domain Name
• Free Website Builder
• Free Website Transfer
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Multimedia Support
• Server Side Includes (SSI) Support
• Softaculous Script Support
• Support for phpForm Generator, Perl, Python etc.
• Bonus Features (Message Board, Form-mail Script, PHP Nuke, Coppermine, Mambo)
• and more…

Performance

In terms of hosting multiple domains in a single web hosting account, Web Hosting Pad stands almost at par with HostMonster and Bluehost. However, looking at the performance aspect, things look somewhat murky. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t necessarily mean that Web Host Pad has to be lauded as the best hosting service out there. There have been some seriously alarming concerns regarding the server downtime issues. What looks good in numbers (a promised uptime of 99.9%) might actually be reduced significantly to just 95% when put to reality. This is just one aspect of client concerns. An unresponsive cPanel, overloaded/faulty servers, severely adverse downtime issues and poor customer support service clearly does no good to boost the overall performance levels of Web Hosting Pad.

Conclusion

The biggest concern with Web Hosting Pad therefore remains its uncaring and lousy attitude towards the clients along with a diverted focus on actually delivering the promised features to them in exact capacities. An outdated PHP version on their servers (as of June, 2011) leaves your website(s) seriously vulnerable to destructive external attacks. Similarly, they have the tendency to keep blocking the clients’ websites for no obvious reasons and offer them only a limited hosting space in the wake of ‘unlimited’ hosting capacity. All this, when combined with a sub-par customer care support, spells a very indolent and irresponsible web hosting service that has to improve to keep up with the bigger hosting providers out there. All that said, the pricing of Web Hosting Pad is superior to most other hosting providers, so it still may be an ideal choice for small or personal website applications.

Web Hosting Pad Ratings

Be sure to check our web hosting coupons page for the latest deals on web hosting packages.