HostICan Review
HostICan is probably one of the lesser known hosts. Based in Virginia, they were founded in late 2003. Their slogan is “Unmetered Bandwidth” as they offer unmetered and unrestricted bandwidth on their upper level plans. Their customers generally consist of those with at least some knowledge of web sites and hosting as they don’t provide a site builder.
HostICan provides shared, virtual private, as well as dedicated hosting. They offer two plan levels for each hosting category and all upper level plans offer the unmetered bandwidth. Their virtual private hosting is available on both Linux and Windows platforms. For a control panel, HostICan offers cPanel as an option for all plans, as well as Plesk for VPS hosting, both of which are hosting industry standards for easy and efficient administration. As an additional service, HostICan can also provide merchant accounts through a partner to those who need to manage transactions on their web site.
HostICan’s plans likely are not the ideal choice for a new user since they do not provide a site builder, but the company does offer templates. Their hosting is priced a bit higher than some of the competition, but they offer large discounts (nearly 50%) if a two year billing cycle is selected. They don’t disclose that the advertised price is based on large billing cycles until you get to the order form. HostICan’s services are backed by a 30 day money-back guarantee that ensures satisfaction.
The customer service they provide is valuable as they offer 24/7/365 toll-free phone and email support. The toll-free number is displayed clearly on every page of HostICan’s web site. They also offer live chat online, available seven days a week from 8:30 AM to 10:30 PM. A searchable knowledgebase and flash tutorials that cover various aspects of the control panel interface, DNS management, FTP access, etc. are also available to customers. Although small, they have a forum community with about 250 members. This scope of a support offering is comparable to that of competitive hosts like HostGator.
The reliability of their hosting is backed by Equinix, a leading datacenter provider. Though backed by a reliable provider, HostICan only utilizes one datacenter, which is located in Virginia. They do provide a 99.9% uptime guarantee and if this is not met, they will refund one month of hosting to the customer.
During the review of HostICan, FTP access was fast and the test site loaded quickly. When your site is first created it creates some default pages such as a placeholder homepage and some default error pages with the HostICan logo and a few links. These should be changed, unless you want to give the company free advertising.
HostICan Customer Support
As part of my HostIcan review of customer support, I tested the HostICan live chat online and received a response to my question in less than two minutes. When submitting another support question via email I received an automated response that told me that “support staff representatives will be in contact shortly with a reply.” It also listed some support resources that I could check out in the mean time. My support email was sent on a Saturday at 4:01 PM. I received a response to my basic question four minutes later. Although my question was as simple as asking about a feature offering, the response time was impressive.
For the next part of the customer support review, I called their support on the same day with the same question and my phone call was just as quick. I was prompted by one level of options and then I was directly connected with a representative. The menu recording and the representative did not demonstrate a high level of professionalism. I had to listen to the menu twice to understand which option I needed to select as it was obviously not a voice studio quality recording, and the company name given didn’t even sound like HostICan. The representative I spoke to was nice enough when I asked him to repeat his question, but not impressively so. My basic issue was answered without being put on hold or having to wait at all. This conveyed to me that they know their service well and they care, although a more difficult question could have thrown them off. I was also glad that the support wasn’t outsourced and that I got to speak to a human quickly.
The conversation went something like this:
Call placed at 4:48 PM.
Prompt: Good afternoon and thank you for calling – what doesn’t even sound like “HostICan” –, an industry grade web hosting service provider, for technical or billing inquiries please press 1 (…continues with other options, I press one)
Me: Hi, I was wondering if Ruby on Rails is supported?
Rep: What plan? (Speech unclear)
Me: I’m sorry, what?
Rep: What plan are you talking about?
Me: Oh, just the shared hosting.
Rep: No
Me: Oh, okay, thank you. Bye.
Call ended 4:52 PM.
HostICan appears to be an overall good host offering competitive services and features. Their plans are a few dollars more than the competition, but their customer service is accessible and quick. They provide all of the qualities of a reputable host and at a reasonable price.
Pros: Accessible support with a quick response time, unmetered bandwidth on all upper level plans
Cons: Slightly more expensive than other hosts, no site builder for new users
Bottom line: HostICan is a good choice for individuals with at least some experience in web hosting and who are willing to pay slightly more for fast service.
Rating: 
February 3rd, 2008
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February 13th, 2008
This is a bad business that doesn’t hold up their “SERVICE GUARANTEE” - please see my post here:
http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/2008/02/12/buyer-beware-do-not-host-with-hostican/
If you are not happy with their service - they say they will refund your money - but they won’t. Better off to go with another host provider!!
February 14th, 2008
Jennifer, I have had one host in the past complain that a script I was running was causing the server to be unstable, specifically the WSN Links Directory script. The host, shall we say, strongly encouraged me to move to another server but did not take my site offline.
I would be pretty upset if a host took down one of my sites, especially if it were revenue generating. A better alternative would be for the host to identify the script and ask that you disable it.
Did you figure out what was causing the high cpu/memory usage?
February 14th, 2008
I did not find out what the problem was. I moved to another host provider (I’m working with my credit card company to try and get my money back from HostICan). They looked at my logs and my files and don’t see any reason why anything I’m running would cause a problem. In fact, since moving to them - THERE HAS NOT BEEN A PROBLEM. This new host is ALSO (inexpensive) shared hosting - so it’s not that. It’s not coincidence. There’s something wrong with HostICan - most especially their customer service and the fact that they use deceptive wording on their site to avoid having to fulfill their “Service Guarantee”.
February 14th, 2008
I think this is another sad case of the user knowing they are over using, and refusing to accept the truth. Moving to hosts that don’t enforce their limits like they should isn’t the solution, and Jennifer knows this perfectly well.
The fact the she is going out of her way to defame HostICan is evidence enough that she is trying to prove a point that she is wrong on.
Even Matt (Lead Programmer) of WP and founder of Automattic, said that 1 bad plugin can take a whole server down. :)
Sounds like another sob story to me, that just shows Jennifer for who she really is.
February 15th, 2008
Why would I waste my time? My interest is purely for the benefit of other people who might make the same mistake as I did and find out much to late that HostICan does not honor their guarantees.
Seeing how you link to HostICan - maybe you work for them? I think there’s more reason to be suspicious of the reasons of your comments.
I am not overusing my server. I didn’t before I went to HostICan and I’m not now.
Go to the forums on HostICan - and you’ll see a number of people complaining of the same problem. (and see how many threads like those get locked or deleted) Something changed on their servers in the last few months. People need to know HostICan is unreliable.
But most importantly - whether I’m a sob story or not. Posting a “Service Guarantee” that clearly states “Your satisfaction or your money back” and then not honoring it is BAD BUSINESS. Hostican’s BBB standing was revoked in 9/19/2007:
http://richmond.bbb.org/WWWRoot/Report.aspx?site=85&bbb=0603&firm=21017360
You guys are bad news.
February 15th, 2008
Ahh “Mr. Denis Motova , Systems Consultant-Contractor”
Listed on BBB’s site.
February 15th, 2008
you’re saying the fact that she’s criticizing hostican is proof that she’s wrong? that don’t make any sense at all!!
and if you treat your custmers like this, then i certainly don’t want to be one.
February 16th, 2008
@ Denis Motova:
> I think this is another sad case of the user knowing they are over using, and refusing to accept the truth.
Which part of “The logs say my usage is at 1.8%” do you people not understand?
February 25th, 2008
RLvB - This isn’t 1.8% but 1.8 seconds, I would have thought that you would get it right by now? Guess not. You received a full refund of your subscription, so I don’t know why you keep misleading people with your accusations. Perhaps you have nothing else to do?
Can you be so kind as to tell me how a 2 month forum can get 14,000 posts in 60 days, as its “new” - I really would like to know… so other patrons can do the same, seems your marketing skills must be somewhat awesome… or you are … well being dishonest.
Jennifer - Do you have anything else to say apart from repeating the same thing over and over again like a broken record? Since you keep saying something that everyone knows… guess not… also very lame.
You always say that everyone else is to “blame” what happened to you being the webmaster and being responsible for you own site? and its usage problems? - or is there no responsibility there? humm…
Anyways, I wish the both of you the best of luck with your new hosts. Jennifer - you just switched to the other host that uses CPU limiting script BlueHost - seems you didn’t do your research all that well?
Do both of yourselves a favor, and stop posting the same old stuff over and over again. Its getting very sad and lame.
February 25th, 2008
Speaking as a friend of HostICan, I am very, very concerned about RLvB, who can’t his facts straight, and Jennifer, who can’t take responsibility for her abuse of the server she was on.
It seems a couple of people are on a holy crusade against a Web host. Give me a break. With all the problems that really exist in our world, this is what they devote their lives to, by trolling the Internet to post their crap on different sites?
Peace,
Gene
February 25th, 2008
Okay, no more arguing. Closing this thread for now.