What is StableHost?

StableHost are an affordable web hosting company. They offer shared web hosting from just £1.39 per month and boast a range of features. They also offer VPS and dedicated servers, as well as responsive web design with their SiteBuilder.

We have technicians around the clock 24/7/365, waiting to help you out.
Our average response time is less than 20 minutes.

Visit StableHost.com (£1.39/Month)

StableHost offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee on their Starter and Pro plans. This goes up to 99.99% uptime guarantee with their platinum plan. As I hadn’t heard of StableHost before, I wanted to find out what they were really like. Their website shows some positive hosting reviews (then again, who would show negative reviews), so I had to check it out for myself.

Back in 2018, StableHost was sold and taken over by new owners. After reading a lot of positive stories on WebHostingTalk about StableHost, it seemed people were worried about the takeover. StableHost were known for great customers service and affordable web hosting.

Reviews since late 2018/early 2019 seem to have changed a little. Customers who loved StableHost previously now seem to be sharing some doubts about their service. It looks like they’re losing some valuable customers due to the change in ownership and how things have been running.

After all the conflicted reviews I had been reading, it was time to find out for myself what I thought of StableHost. I had read a handful of customers saying that the poor customer service was off putting, whereas others have said it’s bad but bearable given their services are so good.

StableHost Server Speed & Uptime

StableHost claim they offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee to their customers. If you’re on their platinum pricing plan, you’ll get 99.99% uptime guarantee. I signed up to one of their basic shared plans and recorded my website’s performance.

Next up I monitored the response time on my website. Response time is how long it takes for the server to respond to a request on a website. For example, if I visitor lands on the website, how long will it take for the server to respond and display the content correctly. This is a big thing if you want visitors to remain on your site and keep coming back to it.

The response time on my StableHost server averaged out at around 438ms. That’s less than half a second which is absolutely fantastic. I have no doubts that my website hosted with StableHost will encounter any performance issues at all.

Although the performance results were brilliant, I still had to find out more about StableHost. Yes, you want a host that’s going to provide great servers, but you also want them to offer fantastic customer service, useful features, and something unique.

Visit StableHost.com (£1.39/Month)

StableHost Features

StableHost are known for being affordable. With plans starting from just £1.39 per month, this rivals some other cheap web hosting. I wanted to know what features they offered to decide whether they were worth recommending to others.

Some of the features that StableHost outline on their website includes:

cPanel control panel
24/7/365 support
1-click installs
Solid State Drives
Site.Pro website builder

So far, so good. There’s a lot of features on offer, as well as the standard features I’d expect to see with any web host. It’s great to see that they use cPanel and don’t try to make a mess of creating their own control panel (which some web hosts really fail at).

Other features also include:

• Data Centers: StableHost have a range of locations you can choose when you sign up to them. Selecting a server in a location that’s optimal for your visitors is extremely important. They currently cover Phoenix, Chicago, and Amsterdam.
• SSL Certificates: SSL certificates are offered for FREE with StableHost. Regardless of which plan you sign up to, your site will be secured with HTTPS. This is a must-have if you plan on selling anything through your website.
• Email Accounts: You’ll get unlimited email accounts with StableHost. Though this might seem like a strange feature, for those who need plenty of email accounts, it’s great. Email hosting can be quite expensive, so knowing all your accounts can be held in one place, for free, is amazing.
• Unlimited Bandwidth: If you’re not quite sure what traffic your website might generate, unlimited bandwidth is reassuring. StableHost’s 200Gbps network can handle plenty of website visitors without costing you an arm and a leg.

StableHost Customer Support

After some of the customer reviews I’ve read about StableHost, especially since their new ownership, I’ve been waiting for my own turn at their customer support. StableHost used to be renowned for their excellent support. Naturally, I was going to put them through the ringer to find out what they could really handle.

The first thing that I noticed was StableHost’s live chat option. Though, it doesn’t really seem to be live chat. When you click on the icon it invites you to leave their customer support a message and they’ll get back to you. This apparently happens within 20 minutes, so I gave it a go. I closed the chat window and received an email 15 minutes later. The question I asked was this:

Hello, I’m looking to sign up to your starter shared plan. I want to know whether you do free site transfers please? I have an issue at the moment where my site has an SSL, but since activating it, my site content doesn’t appear. It loads the website but displays a white page. Please could you confirm what this might be?

So, the answer to my question I received was ‘please read below article and check’. I can see why people are annoyed at the live chat support! That is honestly one of the worst live chat experiences I’ve had (and I’ve had a lot). They didn’t answer my question and clearly couldn’t be bothered!

Their knowledgebase seemed to have a lot of articles, as well as FAQs. If you couldn’t get through to someone in the estimated 20 minute window, I’m pretty sure you could find the answer you were looking for. In the cases where you have more of a specific enquiry, I’m afraid you might have to play the waiting game.

They had a useful StableHost Status page which displayed the current status of all their servers. When I checked on it at 16:18 PM (GMT) not a single one of the servers was down. This was the case over the past few days, of which they displayed the history.

StableHost Pros and Cons

This was quite an interesting review for me for a variety of reasons. When I first started looking into StableHost, I noticed they had been taken over in 2018. Since then, there had been some pretty bad reviews about their services (and customer service) with many loyal customers moving to different hosting providers.

I took it upon myself to test them out for myself. I signed up to one of their pricing plans and recorded my website’s performance. I also reviewed their features, pricing plans, and customer support. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of StableHost to establish if they’re worth recommending or not.

Pros

Uptime: Whilst their uptime guarantee may not be that meaty (99.9%), the results shine through. I recorded my website’s statistics for over 30 days and I didn’t have a single outage during this time. I feel confident in saying that I could rely on StableHost for reliable web hosting.

Features: StableHost have a wide selection of features and tools. They include a free website builder, unlimited email accounts, unlimited bandwidth, FREE SSL certificate and more. You get all of this included even with their cheapest hosting package.

Affordable: Prices start from just £1.39 per month. You’ll get competitive features that some other hosts don’t even offer. StableHost offer a free domain and SSL certificate, which are worth more than the price of your web hosting.

Cons

Customer Support: The articles and FAQs provided by StableHost are good. However, their live chat service is absolutely appalling. They don’t answer questions, rather point you to an unrelated article for you to ‘check’. There wasn’t a resemblance of personalised conversation or VIP treatment.

Platinum Plan: StableHost’s platinum plan is very expensive compared to other hosts offering the same features. Whilst the technical specs are better than their cheaper plans, the price difference is not comparable.

StableHost Pricing

StableHost’s Starter and Pro plans are reasonably priced. They’re affordable and challenge other market leaders in terms of competitive pricing. They offer a wealth of features and tools, most noteworthy their unlimited disk space and bandwidth.

However, if you’re looking for faster and more powerful web hosting, their Platinum plan is going to stretch your wallet. At £22.57 per month, there are only a few differences between their other plans.

Starter:

• 1 Website
• SiteBuilder included
• 500 accounts per server
• INodes = 250,000
• 1 Full CPU Core
• 25 MySQL connections

Pro:

• Unlimited Websites
• SiteBuilder included
• 500 accounts per server
• INodes = 250,000
• 1 Full CPU Core
• 25 MySQL connections

Platinum:

• Unlimited Websites
• SiteBuilder included
• 50 accounts per server
• INodes = 500,000
• 2 Full CPU Cores
• 50 MySQL connections
• Hacked/Compromised Repair
• SpamExperts Spam Filtering

Do I Recommend StableHost?

This is one of the toughest reviews I’ve done. Do I recommend StableHost? Yes and no. If you’re looking for customer service that’s helpful and personal, I do not recommend StableHost. Their customer support was almost non-existent because their live chat agents couldn’t be bothered to answer questions.

However, if you’re looking for a reliable and affordable web host without the customer service, then I would recommend StableHost. Their 2 cheapest plans are very affordable and come with some pretty awesome features. Their uptime and response times were great too, so hosting a small to medium sized website or blog would suit StableHost customers very well.

Here’s a quick summary of StableHost:

Unlimited bandwidth and disk space on ALL plans
Uptime guarantee is 99.9% (I experienced 100% over 30 days)
FREE SSL certificates on all plan (as well as unlimited email accounts and a website builder)
Reliable web hosting at affordable prices

Live chat was very poor
Platinum plan is very expensive