LunarPages
The Honest Review on LunarPages
With the intention of giving an unbiased review, for the past 3+ years we have been trying one of LunarPages hosting plans in Malaysia to experience and closely monitor its customer support, load time (speed) and uptime.
What is LunarPages?
LunarPages can be considered as the pioneer of web hosting provider back in 90’s. In the world of web hosting, LunarPages can be called as the web hosting fossils.
LunarPages started back in 1998 in a humble garage in California by Maximillian Andersen and Ron Riddle, who are the former rider of Harley Davidson. From that, they started to grow a base of customer support for more than 150,000 people including huge clients such as Sony, Microsoft, Caesar’s Entertainment, Cisco, Blackberry and many more.
Nowadays, LunarPages had their own data centers at Nevada, California and Arizona. Being among the oldest web hosting’s in the industry, the common expectation would be their specialities and expertise.
But the real question is, do they? Let’s find out!
The Advantages of LunarPages Hosting
LunarPages is known for its speed and nightly backups.
1. Fast page load
With 8% faster speed of load page at 822ms compared to the average industry of 890ms, it makes the LunarPages stand out by itself.
In web hosting, speed is the most important aspect as it supports towards better development of website such as ranking on the search engine and the number of people switching to your site.
Back then, they page load speed is consistently stable. However, in the last 4 months, the number increase up to 900ms. (That’s not a good sign…)
2. Backup and restoration service
The common scenario is when your website is almost ready and you are just one step way on finishing, but you are lacking with one particular plugins. The moment you click ‘install’ for the plugins, your website suddenly is not working well. (read: screen goes white!)
This is common and the worse part is when all of your progress disappear in the blink on an eye.
No worries! With LunarPages, the Premium Restore Service, will restore your data server automatically on nightly backups and that is their priority basis for FREE.
3. Transparent pricing plan
Majority of web hostings would be ‘playing’ with their pricing.
For example, they will be offering low monthly rate on their website and simply reveal the real pricing in the checkout process. Most of the time, in having the low price, you need to purchase the plan for three years and for every renewal, the price would rise up to their so-called normal rate (which sometimes can be DOUBLE the price!)
While for LunarPages, they doesn’t offer the real month-to-month plan and their Starter monthly pricing for 1 year is similar to 2 years plan.
4. Free site migration and domain name
Some of its plans offer free domain name for registration within 30 days of signup and only on the first year. Not only that, LunarPages hosting will offer you some help in transferring your data when you need to migrate your server all for FREE!
5. 30-day money back guarantee
They also offer the standard policy on money back guarantee.
6. Great uptime
LunarPages offer among the best of uptime which is 99.97%. Even though they rarely experienced low uptime at 99.73%, other than that, they have been super consistent.
The Disadvantages of LunarPages Hosting
1. Limited support
Specifically on their online support, they do have a live chat (which is good!), yet it i snot for the customer support.
We can deny that their ticketing response were among the best, yet it took them almost 12 hours to hear back from them and that is never a good sign.
2. Poor website
Since LunarPages started in 1998, we can say that their website has not been updated frequently.
It is so difficult to navigate on their website in searching for useful information and who non tech person, we would say that, it will be so hard for them to manage the site.
3. Fee for setup
Most of the hosting would offer free setup, but not for LunarPages.
4. Payment for cPanel
cPanel is one of the most basic feature for a website, and usually it is given for free.
Once again, not for LunarPages.
5. User suspension possibility
There would be high possibility for the user might be suspended due to so-called ‘high usage of resource.
6. Expensive pricing
Even though we just praised LunarPages for their cheap pricing, unfortunately we discovered that their pricing Basic plan is more expensive compared to other web hosting.
Pricing, Hosting Plans and Facts on LunarPages
| Starter Web Hosting | Basic Web Hosting | Windows Web Hosting |
| Cost: RM16.17 per month | Cost: RM20.27 per month | Cost: RM40.74 per month |
Features:
|
Features:
To enjoy the $4.95 per month rate, you need to pay the upfront for 5 years all at once. The minimum term that you can pay is $10.95 per month and $30 setup fee, for three months. |
Features:
|
| Free Domain | Free |
| Signup | Long and complicated process |
| Method of payments | PayPal, Check, Alipay, Credit Card and Money Order |
| Fees and Clause | The account might get suspended if it is using “too many server resources”. Nevertheless, the real meaning of “too many server resources” is unclear. |
| Upsells | High upsells involved |
| Activation of Account | Instant activation |
| Dashboard Experience and Control Panel | cPanel (which you need to pay) |
| Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc) installation | Rapid installation with Softaculous for popular apps and CMSs. |
Recommendation on LunarPages
We would suggest you never go for LunarPages.
You’ve got better options out there.
If you are looking for similar pricing, we would suggest you got for SiteGround or even A2 Hosting.
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