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Introduction
Greengeeks is getting better and better everyday and I have witnessed their improvements year after year. If you visit their website, you will notice their pages load blazingly fast. And if you search through their Help Center, you will be amazed on how much articles and resources they have put into it for you.
The second thing that I am very proud of GreenGeeks is that they have not increased their regular pricing since the first day they are in the business! Not a single cent. Many web hosts such as BlueHost and iPage have quietly increased their regular pricing which all their exisiting customers need to pay to renew their accounts. Most of them will only know the fact when the are billed. Not at GreenGeeks. Renewal pricing sticks at $4.95, $6.95 and $7.95 depending on your contract term.
Here are some benefits of hosting with GreenGeeks.
Free Domain Name For Life!
While this is a common offer for the past few years, many web hosts are now pulling this offer away. For example, most web hosts listed here such as BlueHost, iPage and FatCow will offer free domain for the first year only. You will have to pay at least $10 the second year onwards. Where else GreenGeeks is still offering the free domain as long as you are hosting with them.
The Regular Price is Cheaper!
While many hosts such as iPage is giving huge discount all the time, their renewal price is very high. For GreenGeeks their renewal price is lower by at least $2 for 12 months and 24 months and even more for 36 months.
Say for example you signup 12 months at BlueHost, you will need to pay $7.95 x 12 = $91.80. Domain name is free for the first year. On the second year onwards, you will need to renew at $11.99 x 12 + $14.99 domain fee = $158.87/year.
With GreenGeeks, you pay $65.40 for the first year and renew at only $95.40 the next year with free domain name. The accumulated savings will be huge after a few years.
Hosting with GreenGeeks = Hosting with Trey Gardner
I have run this website since 2002 and have known Trey Gardner since then. He was working atiPowerWeb at that time under the marketing department. He had later worked with LunarPagesafter iPowerWeb is being acquired and after that decided to start his own hosting business – GreenGeeks!
The business has been started for over 6 years and because of Trey’s background, I am certain that GreenGeeks will be a very successful hosting company in the future.
Highlights
Lots of Happy Customers
There are a few hundreds customer feedback published in their testimonial page. You won’t probably have the time to read all of them because there are so many of them! Pick some to read and see how happy is their customer and how well their business is doing.
Unlimited Hosting
Nothing new to this as it has became the standard. Any web host that try to set a limit will soon go out of business. But there is really nothing call “unlimited hosting”.
CPanel Control Panel
They have chosen to use the best control panel system in the world for web hosting – the CPanel. HostGator uses it. JustHost uses it. LunarPages uses it. And I can say most great hosts uses it.
You do everything easily in this control panel – create and manage emails accounts, create and manage your databases, your domains, etc.
Free Site Migration
This is one of the biggest selling point. They will help you to migrate your website from your previous host free of charge. If your previous host is also running CPanel, then most of your files and settings (email/databases) can be easily transfer to GreenGeeks since they are running on the same platform.
If your previous host is not using CPanel, then they will only help you with files transfer and a maximum of 2 databases. Everything else such as emails, domains settings will not be transfered.
The only other web host that provide such free service that I am aware of is HostGator (which this site is hosted on). No web hosts will want to promise you to migrate your site because it is quite a headache processes. Do not expect everything to be done to your satisfaction especially when you are not using CPanel previously. Site migration is a complicated process itself and you may need to fine tune it yourself later, i.e. making sure the scripts works, etc.
300% Green
This is one of their biggest selling point since the word “Green” even appear in their brand name – GreenGeeks. They are the most “green” web hosting company that I am aware of. Why they can call themselves green while they are still using ordinary electricity? What they do is to purchase 3 times wind generated power and feed it back to the electricity grid. There is really no electric cable that connect the wind turbine directly to their datacenter. They do it by purchasing “wind energy credits” from U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA).
North America Based Customer Support
It has been a trend that many web hosting companies has been doing their customer support offshore hiring people in places such as India and Philippines. I am not against web hosting company hiring them to do the backend technical job such as server maintenance because many of them are actually even better then the local. But when it comes to customer support, I am strongly against it. Since the business is dealing with mostly North American English speaking customers, the customer support should always be better to be native as well so they can communicate better.
GreenGeeks has insisted that all their customer support team to be staffed by locals which means you don’t need to speak to someone with Indian accent when you pick up the phone.
What I Don’t Like
What I don’t like about the service is that it only provides 30-day money back guarantee and no pro-rated refund after that. Web hosts such as HostGator, iPage and JustHost offer anytime money back guarantee where you can get back your unused portion anytime you want. Because of this I am only willing to sign up for 1 or 2 years and will not consider the 3 years option.
Summary
Although they are less than 3 years in business, everything looks robust and promising. This goes back to the CEO and founder Trey’s Gardner more than 10 years of experience in the web hosting industry. You can certainly consider them as your web hosting provider.
Make sure you read their customer feedback if you haven’t do it yet.
