InterServer is a premium-quality web hosting service worldwide. Although the company doesn’t have the fame and reputation of more prominent names, it is not among the understaffed ones with underperforming servers and poor customer service. InterServer ensures 99.9% uptime, 24/7 customer assistance, and good features.
InterServer offers its users affordable plans and can be great for virtual portfolios, small businesses, and personal sites. And although the company claims to be a dependable hosting provider, especially when you need a pay-as-you-go plan, it is still doubtful why InterServer hasn’t had any notable marketing campaign despite the two decades of business history.
So, I have personally checked and tested the company to see how good its usability is, as well as its speed, uptime, and pricing. This is an unbiased review aimed at showing the full power of the hosting provider while also not forgetting to showcase its downsides.
However, before presenting insight into InterServer’s services, it’s worth checking on the significant pros and cons:
InterServer Pros & Cons
Pros: | Cons: |
| ✔ Affordable plans: The selection of plans is broad and will satisfy any user’s requirements. And although the most effective plans come at relatively high prices, the combination of price and functionality of entry tiers is superb. ✔ 99.9% uptime guarantee: The InterServer website delivers excellent uptime and page loading speeds. ✔ Free hosting for nonprofits and students: Nonprofit organizations can subscribe to a lifetime free hosting plan with an IRS 501C3 tax ID. Meanwhile, students get it free for the first year of use. ✔ Free SSL and malware protection: InterServer also provides free brand security tools via InterShield and Inter-Insurance. ✔ Classic and user-friendly cPanel interface: Looking a bit outdated, the incorporated cPanel is familiar and convenient for most users. ✔ Free website migration: InterServer suggests moving an already functioning site hosted elsewhere to its servers at no cost and with little to no downtime. During the site migration, the website also is checked for and cleaned of malware through the brand’s Inter-Insurance product. ✔ Unlimited storage even with the entry plan: Create as many sites as you wish, and put as many details into them as necessary. | ✘ Account interface is a little outdated: Although InterServer has a straightforward interface, it looks outdated and dull. ✘ No free domain name: Normally, hosting providers allow using a free domain for one year after registration. You shouldn’t expect any feature of this kind, except a discount on the first domain for new users. ✘ Data centers are situated only in the US: This is not a perfect aspect for sites with worldwide audiences. |
InterServer Features
InterServer provides comprehensive website running services, from hosting to maintenance and growth. It offers fast in-house hosting for any website, irrespective of its niche, and dedicated servers for a blog, personal site, store, or any other type of high-traffic site.
InterServer introduces several features that make the service a worthy contender to more popular options. Let’s review some:
- Cloudflare CDN and LiteSpeed Caching: Caching saves static copies of website pages for future use, significantly increasing the site’s operating speed. LiteSpeed includes all of the caching tools necessary for improving site operation.
Access LiteSpeed caching through the InterServer’s cPanel and let it search your drive and set up cached copies. As a result, you will save loading time for advanced pages, which may require much computing power. - Unlimited Sites and Domains: With most website hosting services, there are caps on the number of websites you can create, especially when you are a shared hosting plan owner. Even if you had free disk space enough for a small project, they would limit you to using subdomains.
However, this is not the case with InterServer. The latter allows the creation of as many databases as necessary, while the domain manager can help you set up extra domains for various sites. This feature is especially beneficial for those users who need several websites but don’t expect much traffic from them. - Account Management: The InterServer account management portal empowers users to order or change the existing services. It features a minimalistic, tidy design and is easy to navigate. However, it’s not as visually polished as those of other hosting companies.
- Free Email Accounts: InterServer suggests creating an endless number of email accounts. There’s also no restriction on the amount of money to be spent. With this rather advantageous feature, users don’t have to integrate a third-party provider to set up a branded email account with an identical domain.
- Free Website Migration: Most users already have sites when they moved to InterServer. And this is another free service by InterServer. Thanks to the free site migration, you won’t spend extra money hiring a specialist or paying InterServer for the service.
- Unlimited SSD Storage: When dealing with most hosting providers, you face restrictions regarding the amount of space on every contract and how many details your site can include. However, InterServer users are not subject to limitations of this kind. The company delivers unlimited storage in all its shared hosting plans.
- Website Builder: At no extra price, InterServer users get a website builder SitePad. So, if you don’t have a site yet, you will definitely take this feature for granted. The site-building tool has over 300 templates, 40+ widgets, and full integration with popular control panels like Plesk, cPanel, and DirectAdmin. SitePad is an excellent tool for non-tech people as it functions on a drag-and-drop editor, ensuring quick and easy website creation and publishing. Whatever website you create will be mobile responsive and compatible with all screen sizes. The site builder also publishes static pages like CSS, HTML, and JS to the user’s domain so that the website functions faster.
- Backups: InterServer offers website backups as a flexible and cost-effective data storage method. The company performs data backups weekly. Those are saved on a distant server for extra security.
Available Hosting Services
InterServer covers all possible website hosting services, from Standard Web Hosting to Dedicated and Reseller hosting options. Its web hosting quality and cost-effectiveness are especially appropriate for freelancers. InterServers’ VPS and Dedicated hosting plans will suffice all needs of small to medium enterprises since they are highly scalable.
Aside from pretty standard hosting plans, InterServer offers ASP.NET for Windows developers, Managed colocation hosting for companies that require full command of their physical infrastructure.
In the scope of participation in charity, InterServer provides a free shared web hosting plan to nonprofits with 501C3 status certified by the IRS. The free plan includes everything an ordinary shared hosting plan has.
Another free hosting offer is designed for students. By signing up with their school’s email address, they can subscribe to the Standard shared hosting plan entirely for free for the first year.
InterServer Dashboard and Ease of Use
InterServer features a well-organized dashboard where all features necessary for setting up and managing a thriving site are one click away. In particular, you can access all the primary functions like adding a webmail account and domain, installing WP, or editing files in the File Manager. Such functionality comes at the sacrifice of the look – the dashboard seems to be daunting. However, you still don’t have to sift through multiple buttons before you find what you’re searching for.
Furthermore, the hosting provider has incorporated a search bar on the top to make it straightforward to spot a specific function. You type what you need, and cPanel brings it up for you at that point.
The InterServer client area is smooth. It offers information on your domains, hosting plans, servers, etc. The hosting provider exploits the standard cPanel as the most beginner-friendly control panel. While its usability and functionality are beyond doubt, the interface could be prettier. It looks outdated, which doesn’t bring joy to work on.
However, what sets InterServer apart from other hosts, is that you can fuel up your business with the control panel you feel more comfortable about. The available options are cPanel, CloudLinux, Direct Admin, and Plesk.
Website Builder: Themes and Customization
InterServer offers a brand website builder known as SitePad with a WYSIWYG editor. The tool allows creating and launching a website in minutes without going into content management. You upload your site automatically while avoiding the management of a complicated filesystem.
SitePad comes included in all InterServer hosting plans for free. It incorporates more than 300 themes separated into different categories to find the perfect theme for your site purpose easier. Overall, InterServer themes are designed in a minimalistic and elegant style. They don’t stand out, yet they are pleasing to the eye and customizable.
Additionally, the site builder gives a chance to integrate around 40 widgets to make the site customization more effective with Google Maps, Video and Audio files, Image Galleries, Service Box, etc.
The SitePad’s drag-and-drop editor is convenient for users with no coding knowledge. On the other hand, website developers will find customization somewhat limited. The static pages CSS, HTML, and JS are automatically published to a user’s domain to boost its speed and performance.
Security
In terms of security, InterServer is undoubtedly reliable. You get an SSL certificate with every hosting plan at no additional cost. Without this security tool, Google would flag your website as unreliable and frighten potential visitors before you start.
Other than this, InterServer provides users with Inter-Insurance and InterShield security solutions. The latter prevents attacks on your site by monitoring numerous servers and sites to identify assaults and duplicating protection measures across other servers. Furthermore, aside from blocking web attacks, InterShield native security suite also acts as a machine-learning firewall, automatic scanner for viruses with everyday scans, and in-house malware database.
The only downside of this security solution is that it provides only weekly backups. For optimal protection, daily backs up would be more expedient.
As for the other native security tool Inter-Insurance, you see it at work when your site is hacked or infected. The solution investigates the issue, restores the site, and takes measures to prevent the same problem from repeating. The tool is provided for free.
Customer Support
InterServer offers 24/7 customer assistance through help tickets, email, and live chat. The company has native-speaking call centers in the US (two options), England, Brazil, Israel, and Mexico. The electronic mail for tech support is available only after logging into your account. At the same time, the billing department (billing@interserver.net) and sales team (sales@interserver.net) emails can be used by users and site visitors.
InterServer also offers a mailing address for letters if a user prefers the traditional way of interacting with the company. As such, there is no knowledge base, so you will have to contact the support directly to have the emerging issue solved.
As for the quality of InterServer support service, it’s reliable in most cases. The agents don’t just send links with articles. Instead, they either guide the user on solving the issue from inside the website or do it remotely.
Performance
InterServer claims to provide 99.9% uptime. This feature is also standard like all other features of the hosting provider. Our performance monitoring tests showed good results, as the uptime stayed 99.99%, just as the company ensured. Also, only about an hour of downtime is registered in one year. This is quite a good indicator for any website hosting provider, so InterServer performs pretty well.
However, the response time of an InterServer server is rather average. While more powerful hosting providers score below 300ms, InterServer delivers at 662ms.
Page loading time results are definitely more impressive than the response time. Normally, the result is considered good if a web page loads in less than 2.5 seconds. You will get even better results regardless of the server hosting your InterServer site.
Pricing
InterServer offers several types of hosting, priced moderately across all of them. What the provider misses is the free trial period. To see InterServer at work, you must buy a plan right from the start. If you don’t get what you expected, the 30-day refund policy works well.
Let’s see the suggested tiers and their pricing:
- Web Hosting: Best for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and eCommerce sites, shared hosting starts at $2.50 with the introductory Standard plan. It offers 450+ cloud apps, unmetered storage and email accounts, free site migration, SSL, SitePad builder, and global content caching.
ASP.NET is designed for Windows developers and allows making amazing sites and apps with MSSQL, ASP.NET, and five versions of PHP, Python, Perl, and SSI. The plan costs $8/mo and includes everything from the Standard plan plus the chance to create up to 25 sites.
The Boost tiers cost $9.95 to $69.95 and are better for high-traffic websites. Meanwhile, the Reseller tiers, priced from $19.95 to $69.95, are especially recommended for industry experts planning to resell several sites. The prices are set per month.
- Cloud VPS Hosting: These hosting tiers are intended for eCommerce websites, midsize to large businesses. InterServer offers Linux VPS priced from $6 to $96 per month, Storage VPS priced from $6 to $96 per month, WP VPS at $6 to $96 per month, and Windows VPS tiers costing from $10 to $160 per month. The prices depend on the CPU Cores, Memory, Storage, and Data Transfer capacities.
InterServer also offers a reliable one-click Webuzo VPS at a fixed $6/mo price.
- Dedicated Hosting: Dedicated servers ensure highly optimized and secure sites. The included tiers include DDOS protection, zero setup fees, private network, remote KVM, 150TB data transfer, four-hour provisioning, IPMI or iLo access, remote OS reinstall, etc. Dedicated tiers are priced from $45 to $500 per month.
Final Words
Investigating InterServer from A to Z, we can state that this hosting provider has everything necessary to stand alongside the market-leading companies. It equals affordability. Although the company has a month-to-month billing system, you can still pay upfront and get a discount. InterServer is a good choice for tight budgets, yet it has perfect options for those who need extra power and don’t mind overpaying.
InterServer delivers excellent performance for the price and features amazing security tools. Aside from the basic SSL encryption and weekly backups, the hosting provider offers in-house InterShield and Inter-Insurance security solutions.
And if you don’t have a website yet that you can migrate to InterServer for free, the company suggests building one right on its platform through the brand SitePad website builder.
On the other hand, InterServer can’t boast of a flashy user interface. Although functional, it looks outdated.
So, if InterServer has no eye-striking downsides while the suggested functionality prevails over the price, why isn’t it included on the lists of the top website hosting providers? Most probably, the company lacks good marketing.
