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WebFaction Review, Rating & Secret Unveiled 2018
As a host for developers, WebFaction keeps a rather low profile. Unlike most companies, it does not release any information on its founding or places any About Us page on its official site. Nevertheless, we still take the trouble to review its hosting services in case some readers need to know.
The company does shared hosting as well as managed dedicated servers. Judged by the product mix, WebFaction is by no means a professional hosting provider. It offers only one shared hosting package, which costs $9.5/mo if paid monthly or $8.5/mo if paid annually.
Frankly speaking, the price is acceptable but not very competitive on the hosting market. Some top hosting companies price their shared hosting plans around $5/mo with uncompromised performance. Is it because WebFaction offers incomparable features, uptime or support? Not really. Please proceed to the detailed analysis to see for yourself.
The company does shared hosting as well as managed dedicated servers. Judged by the product mix, WebFaction is by no means a professional hosting provider. It offers only one shared hosting package, which costs $9.5/mo if paid monthly or $8.5/mo if paid annually.
Frankly speaking, the price is acceptable but not very competitive on the hosting market. Some top hosting companies price their shared hosting plans around $5/mo with uncompromised performance. Is it because WebFaction offers incomparable features, uptime or support? Not really. Please proceed to the detailed analysis to see for yourself.
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Editorial Review
WebFaction Speed Review 2.00 of 5
WebFaction locates its data centers in USA, Amsterdam and Singapore so that users can choose the one near to their target visitors. But unfortunately, we find that its hosting speed ranks below average. We tested its speed with Pingdom and the server response time was 795ms.
Many complaints of slow speed can be found on WebFaction community forum. More than ten people say that their WordPress sites hosted on WebFaction become extremely slow and time out frequently every 3-4 days. These users do not have many plugins installed and the traffic is low, but the server response rate was just awful.
Many complaints of slow speed can be found on WebFaction community forum. More than ten people say that their WordPress sites hosted on WebFaction become extremely slow and time out frequently every 3-4 days. These users do not have many plugins installed and the traffic is low, but the server response rate was just awful.
WebFaction Reliability Review 2.50 of 5
Unlike some really reliable hosts like InMotion Hosting who offers daily backups, WebFaction backs up data weekly to a remote location. The worst part is the company does not guarantee the existence or completeness of any backups and customers themselves are responsible for backing up their data. This is expressly stated on their official website. Hence, the data become very vulnerable when downtime occurs.
The company does not guarantee 99.9% uptime. Even if it does, there are still chances of downtime. One customer tweets that his WebFaction server was down for almost 48 hours. When his server was back up, all the recent files and databases were missing. He got the data restored eventually but the process was tough. Now he is seriously considering switching to another host.
The company does not guarantee 99.9% uptime. Even if it does, there are still chances of downtime. One customer tweets that his WebFaction server was down for almost 48 hours. When his server was back up, all the recent files and databases were missing. He got the data restored eventually but the process was tough. Now he is seriously considering switching to another host.
WebFaction Feature Review 3.00 of 5
The plan comes with limited but upgradable resources including 100 GB disk space, 600 GB bandwidth and 512 MB RAM. If users want to upgrade these resources, they need to pay $5/mo for 50GB disk space, $5/mo for 300GB bandwidth, $7/mo for 512MB RAM and another $5/mo for a dedicated IP address. When the fees are added up and multiplied by 12, the plan becomes very unaffordable.
Except for limited resources, the rest hosting features are generally good. Running on bare metal CentOS 6, the plan offers full SSH access, Ngnix and Apache servers, the latest version of scripting languages, MySQL databases, DNS and many other user-friendly tools that can be easily installed with a 1-click installer.
However, the company does not offer the popular cPanel but develops its own control panel instead. Some webmasters remarked that WebFaction control panel is not something comparable to cPanel because it is still primitive in UI and features.
Except for limited resources, the rest hosting features are generally good. Running on bare metal CentOS 6, the plan offers full SSH access, Ngnix and Apache servers, the latest version of scripting languages, MySQL databases, DNS and many other user-friendly tools that can be easily installed with a 1-click installer.
However, the company does not offer the popular cPanel but develops its own control panel instead. Some webmasters remarked that WebFaction control panel is not something comparable to cPanel because it is still primitive in UI and features.
WebFaction Technical Support Review 1.00 of 5
WebFaction offers 24/7 technical support through live chat and ticketing system but not toll free phone. This will great affect work efficiency because what could have been a 10-minute phone call has turned into a flurry of back and forth emails and no resolution.
The company also provides various self-support channels such as Documentation, Status blog and Q&A community site. We visited the Documentation page and found only three PDF documents. Then we visited their community site and found the links to the hot topics were invalid. We are just too disappointed to visit their blog.
The company also provides various self-support channels such as Documentation, Status blog and Q&A community site. We visited the Documentation page and found only three PDF documents. Then we visited their community site and found the links to the hot topics were invalid. We are just too disappointed to visit their blog.