As I mentioned recently in my post about switching to BlogEngine.net, I said that I was switching to an ASP.NET web host, WebHost4Life. Now that it’s been a few weeks since I first signed up for WebHost4Life, I figured I could write a little review about my experiences so far.
Price/Features
I am on the Professional plan, which costs $9.95/month (paid annually). I get unlimited bandwidth and a good amount of features, including ASP.Net 3.5 on IIS7, 1 MSSQL server and 3GB of storage. One drawback of their pricing structure is that the price you sign up under is only promotional for the first year. That kind of stinks to get a good price for the first year and then have to pay more as an established customer, but at least it’s stated up front. At my promotional price, I feel that the price/features value is quite good. Even when the price goes up next year, I still imagine the value will be good, but I’ll probably reevaluate when the time comes.
Control Panel
Compared to my experience with cPanel on Linux hosts, the control panel in WebHost4Life is a bit easier to work with. I think cPanel is fine, but I prefer WebHost4Life’s control panel. It explains the features and changes well and is quite easy to use. So far I have only found one thing I could not do with it, which I explain in the “Support” section below.
Support
Already I have had a few experiences with support, none of which were their fault. I was having trouble setting up my new BlogEngine.net application due to the fact that it has to be configured as a classic ASP.NET application in IIS. There was no way to set this in the control panel, so I had to ask support for assistance. I submitted my issue as a normal priority (3 of 5) and I had my issue resolved and a response within 24 hours, which is very acceptable to me, especially since I said it was not crital and for the price I pay.
Up Time / Speed
I have not experienced a single power outage or slow down so far. Granted my site isn’t getting much traffic, but it’s nice to know that they don’t have regular outage issues.
Webmail
WebHost4Life uses SmarterMail as its email server, and I have to say, the web access for SmarterMail is quite impressive. I haven’t got a chance to try the Outlook integration, but it’s supposed to be good, too. Try out the demo to see for yourself.
Comparison
The only other comparable ASP.NET host that I found for under $15/month was DiscountASP.net. I considered their service heavily since I read very good reviews and they are very comparable on price. The one thing that won me to WebHost4Life was that with DiscountASP.net, you must pay extra for MSSQL server.I get one free with WebHost4Life. If I have any issues down the road, I’ll definitely try out DiscountASP.net.
If you think my review of WebHost4Life sounds good, give them a try. With a 45 day money back guarantee, you don’t have to worry.