Note: eHost as a web host provider terminated its operations back in 2017!
When it comes to choosing where to host your website (ie. where to store it on the cloud), the options are seemingly limitless. There are complex solutions with endless configurations, like what you’ll get with a cPanel, and then there are simple solutions that not only host your site but give you the ability to build your own modern looking, mobile responsive website using a clean drag and drop website builder.
Old Review Before eHost Termination
After scouring the internet for the best hosting sites for small business or simple-need websites, one of the more unique hosting companies I could find for the lowest price was ehost.com.
The question is: Do they sacrifice quality for the cost? Luckily this is not the case with eHost. But we’ll get to that later on.
eHost.com – Hosting a website on a budget
As seen on their website they boasts many perks in the list price including a free domain name and unlimited email addresses at that domain; free marketing tools like ad credits on major search engines; and a 45-day money back guarantee. They also afford you the choice between using the complex cPanel or the drag and drop builder.
eHost enables you to host as many domains as you need from inside the single cPanel hosting account. On top of it you have access to a free website builder with hundreds professional templates available. With this hosting service you will always find some new useful features and option.
Below, we’re going to walk through what to expect from the overall experience with eHost.
Sign up Process and Perks
Sites like Weebly.com or Wix.com allow you to create a free account and play with or build your site before making the commitment to purchase a domain and hosting plan. Unfortunately, this is not the case with eHost, as they require an immediate commitment to transfer/purchase the domain and buy a plan. The you have to choose cPanel vs. Site-Builder all upfront without ever actually taking a test drive with either option. This lack of knowing exactly what I would be purchasing was an uncomfortable feeling. I instead spent an hour or so surfing the net to find reviews, videos, etc. But, as luck would have it, I found only two places where you can get that free test drive of the website builder eHost uses, as well as the cPanel.
cPanel Options
Click image to view all screenshots
Once you’ve purchased and set up your domain by choosing the cPanel option it’s time to get your site up and running. Now, just because you chose the cPanel, does not mean you need to start your site from scratch. eHost equips you with easy access to many of the most popular open-source giants like WordPress (blogs and personal), Drupal (content management) and Magento (eCommerce).
Other noted highlights from eHost:
- Create your own online store and sell goods online with our excellent eCommerce package. cPanel Only.
- Create an online store, start a blog or set up a photo gallery. All the best apps are available with eHost.
- Instant access to their state of the art drag and drop website editor. Choose from 100s of professional looking templates.
After spending some time playing around with Magento, I decided to clean house and build a simple PHP site from scratch. I used an outside program to code the files then uploaded the site through the cPanel File Manager. After establishing an 
FTP connection using FileZilla, I ran into several max-connections-exceeded issues when attempting to load iterations of files and folders in mass to my cPanel. After various conversations with eHost support, the matter went unresolved and I simply loaded one file at a time directly from the file manager in the cPanel. Even though the eHost staff was very helpful, I felt it was a simple issue that should have been resolved but was not.
Maybe I just got unlucky, I believe our readers will share their experience in the comments and reviews underneath this article.
Not to forget to mention eHost’s support team is reachable through all common communication channels: phone, chat and also email. This may come handy in many situations.
I’ll try to come back in the next 3 months and update my review in regard to their support.
Other Features and Limitations
Disk Space & Bandwidth
eHost boasts a policy of “no set limits” on storage space or bandwidth for their shared hosting plans with the only disclaimer being that this covers 99.95% of all customers who are “normal operation of a personal or small business website”. When it comes to email storage space, eHost customers are allowed to create an unlimited number of mailboxes. However, each individual mailbox is allowed a max of 500MB (or 10,000 emails, whichever comes first).
Backup Options
Through the cPanel, eHost offers a simple and effective Backup Solution. The backup options range from a Full website backup to partial backups, email and MySQL backups. Simply run the backup feature to download a file to a local or remote location, and from there you can restore it(or any of the various versions you’ve saved) using the upload/restore options.
Bonus Cloud Storage
As an added perk tied to signing up with eHost, you can claim a free 1GB of storage through justcloud.com which is basically comparable to DropBox, but more expensive and less features.
Other Limitations
As with any shared hosting solution, there are bound to be a number of system limitations to ensure that every customer is ensured adequate resources for their own implementations. Below are some of the limitations published in the eHost online Support library:
Pricing
The current displayed promo $2.75/month is for 3 year term. After that the price renews at the regular rates as per the table below *. Comparing to their competition the eHost’s pricing is quite reasonable.
- The list of their 50% discounted hosting prices:
- 12 month package @ $4.99/month ($59.88)
- 24 month package @ $3.49/month ($83.76)
- 36 month package @ $2.75/month ($99.00)
*
Usability
network-tools.com Results
The sign-up process was very easy. After choosing my domain name and product package, I was up and running within just a few hours. For testing purposes, I opted to do a quick install with Magento and after some fiddling (with Magento configurations unrelated to eHost), I had an eCommerce site live on the internet. A few quick tests showed that my server IP through eHost was registered out of St. Louis, Missouri and had standard speed. I ran my domain through https://gtmetrix.com/ and compared to other major sites, the speeds to load the home page was okay.
pagescoring.com results
About eHost the Company
eHost is headquartered out of Houston, Texas under the ownership of its parent company, The Endurance International Group, Inc.(Fun Fact: “The Endurance” was the name of the ship that was crushed by pack ice on an expedition attempting to carry the first man across Antarctica). eHost markets themselves as a company that provides web hosting, design, domain name registration, and a variety of other products, to individuals and businesses alike.
Conclusion
In the end, eHost was just what I was looking for to host my own, mostly static PHP website and email. I don’t see their technical support winning any awards anytime soon but at least they are responsive. The cPanel offers a wide variety of features ranging in complexity. I would not suggest the cPanel route for anyone who is not technically savvy with a diverse knowledge of not only web development and coding, but also networking and network security. For those that want to take the easy route and use the website builder, you’ll get almost everything you need through eHost. And when it comes to the price, you won’t find many options that can equal the quality of eHost.
However, since eHost ceased its operations back in 2017, we recommend to explore BlueHost.com web services instead (much better choice).
