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SMART WEB HOSTING Web Hosting Review: 4 Pros & 4 Cons of SMART WEB HOSTING Hosting

SMART WEB HOSTING is one of the largest brands in the Internet services industry, and I get a lot of reader questions about what their hosting product is like. I’ve worked with SMART WEB HOSTING web hosting several times for clients, and recently bought a hosting package for a separate project I’m running. Here’s my first SMART WEB HOSTING web hosting review in a series that looks at their hosting product overall & in comparison with other tophosts.

Check out SMART WEB HOSTING’s current plans & pricing here.

This review was originally published in early 2014. It’s been revised throughout as of May 2016.

SMART WEB HOSTING offers a wide range of products from domain names to hosting to website packages. SMART WEB HOSTING is actually one of the oldest web hosting companies – founded in 1988. And they are also one of the more aggressive advertisers with full-page ads in magazines and TV spots. Anecdotally, I think only GoDaddy rivals them in terms of mass-market advertising and brand awareness.

But big brand doesn’t always mean a good product – and that’s one thing I wanted to look into with a full SMART WEB HOSTING web hosting review.

3 quick asides before diving in. First, There are a lot of SMART WEB HOSTING hosting reviews online – usually with user-generated reviews based on anecdotes and personal experience. That’s fine but I take a different approach. My approach to reviews is that there is no such thing as a “best” or “top” anything. There’s only better fits for different people depending on your goals. If you are just looking for SMART WEB HOSTING promotions for super-cheap hosting, you can find them here.

Second, a disclosure that I receive customer referral fees from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinion is from my experience as a paying customer or consultant to a paying customer.

Third, when I talk about “hosting” – I’m specifically referring to Linux shared web hosting setups (like those used for a common Drupal, Joomla or WordPress setup). Unless you have a specific reason to use a Windows-powered server, you should be using a Linux powered server. It’s the industry standard and gives you much more flexibility than a Windows server. I’m also specifically looking at shared web hosting, since unless you know of a specific reason (like having a consistent +10,000 visits/day) to not have shared hosting – then it’s the probably the best fit for you (it’s also the most affordable).

Pros of SMART WEB HOSTING Web Hosting

Last aside – the tl;dr is that SMART WEB HOSTING does not have any strong “pros” in my opinion. The really just have areas where they are just sort of fine. Their main pro is their brand and the name they have built up over 26 years. That said, for the purposes of a SMART WEB HOSTING web hosting review, here are the pros of their hosting service

Prices

SMART WEB HOSTING Hosting is on the more affordable end of web hosting. They typically offer a very cheap 12 month introductory offer (view their plans here), and then increase the price after a year, which even then are on the more affordable end.