Half Dollar Hosting Review – My Experience After 2 Years

Half Dollar Hosting

8

Easy to use

8.5/10

Settings

8.0/10

Price

9.5/10

Overall quality

6.0/10

Pros

  • Affordable price
  • Decent uptime for price
  • Good for new websites

Cons

  • Terrible support
  • Slow hosting speed

Half Dollar what?? you may ask. Yeah, I am sure you never heard about them before. There is not much info if you type in Google too. This is why I decided to share my experience and make Half Dollar Hosting review.

There are one of many affordable WordPress hosting providers who are trying to take piece of cake from big players like GoDaddy, GreenGeeks (check GreenGeeks review), 10Web (see 10Web review), InMotion, Siteground, HostGator, HostArmada, etc.

Half Dollar Hosting provides domain registration, web hosting and a variety of server hosting options. The firm is located in England, but all services are in USD. So how did I ended with Half Dollar Hosting? I don’t use anymore their services, but I did for 2 years.

When choosing a hosting provider, there are many things to take into consideration. If you are new to this, like I was 2 years ago, then all those features might look confusing.

When starting, I didn’t have much money to invest. So naturally many prices from popular hosting providers for hosting plans seemed too high for me.

Why should I pay so much when I don’t even know if my site will have any success or readers. That is why I decided to go baby steps. Invest little and if things start to roll I will invest in better services/products. Seems reasonable.

So I decided to go with HalfDollarHosting. I was surprised how much you get for the money you invest. It was very affordable.

NOTE: Half Dollar Hosting closed its services on August 31, 2018.

 

Cheap WordPress Hosting Providers Comparison

low cost wordpress hosting comparison features
  • NAME
  • SSD INCLUDED
    Solid state drives provides increased performance and reliability over mechanical hard drives.
  • FREE DOMAIN
  • DISK SPACE
  • BANDWIDTH
  • EMAIL SPAM FILTERING
  • SUPPORT
  • FREE WEBSITE TRANSFER
    Does hosting company provide free site migration from another hosting provider
  • FREE BACKUPS
  • MONEY BACK GURANTEE
  • ADVERTISING CREDITS
  • FREE WEBSITE BUILDER
  • WEBSITES SUPPORTED
    How many websites can you have
  • PHP 7 SUPPORTED
  • SSH ACCESS
  • PARKED DOMAINS
  • SUB DOMAINS
  • FTP ACCOUNTS
  • MALWARE PROTECTION
  • FREE SSL
  • LETS ENCRYPT INTEGRATION
  • CLOUDFLARE INTEGRATION
  • CPANEL
  • HTTP/2 ENABLED SERVERS
  • PRICE
inmotion vs siteground vs ipage vs a2 vs bluehost vs namecheap
  • INMOTION SHARED WORDPRESS HOSTING LAUNCH PLAN
    Launch plan
  • If you already have a domain, you will geta credit that can be used to transfer your existing domain from another registrar.
  • UNLIMITED
    Certain restrictions apply
  • UNLIMITED
    Certain restrictions apply
  • PHONE,TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • Applies to accounts consisting of 3 or fewer databases and/or websites. Accounts wishing to transfer more than 3 items will be charged $10 per additional item to be transferred.
  • 90 DAYS
  • $100 of Google Adwords credits, $75 of Bing advertising credits and $75 of Yahoo advertising credits and a free Yellow Pages business listing
  • 2
  • 6
  • 25
  • You will need to install it manually
  • $4.89/MONTH
bluehost vs inmotion vs siteground vs ipage
  • BLUEHOST SHARED HOSTING BASIC PLAN
    Basic plan
  • 50
  • UNLIMITED
  • PHONE,TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • They charge $149.99
  • 30 DAYS
  • 1
  • 5
  • 25
  • You will need to install it manually from 3rd party
  • You will need to install it manually
  • $3.95/MONTH
siteground vs ipage vs a2hosting vs greengeeks vs bluehost
  • SITEGROUND WORDPRESS SHARED HOSTING STARTUP PLAN
    Startup plan
  • 10
  • UNLIMITED
  • PHONE,TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • For 1 website
  • 1 copy
  • 30 DAYS
  • 1
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • $4.65/MONTH
namecheap vs siteground vs bluehost
  • NAMECHEAP SHARED HOSTING VALUE PLAN
    Value plan
  • Free .website domain and free WhoisGuard
  • 20
  • UNLIMITED
  • TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • Twice a week
  • 14 DAYS
  • 3
  • UNLIMITED
  • 50
  • 50 users
  • You can manually add Lets Encrypt free certificate
  • You need to manually add
  • Not out of the box
  • $0.82/MONTH
low cost wordpress hosting comparison features
  • NAME
  • SSD INCLUDED
    Solid state drives provides increased performance and reliability over mechanical hard drives.
  • FREE DOMAIN
  • DISK SPACE
  • BANDWIDTH
  • EMAIL SPAM FILTERING
  • SUPPORT
  • FREE WEBSITE TRANSFER
    Does hosting company provide free site migration from another hosting provider
  • FREE BACKUPS
  • MONEY BACK GURANTEE
  • ADVERTISING CREDITS
  • FREE WEBSITE BUILDER
  • WEBSITES SUPPORTED
    How many websites can you have
  • PHP 7 SUPPORTED
  • SSH ACCESS
  • PARKED DOMAINS
  • SUB DOMAINS
  • FTP ACCOUNTS
  • MALWARE PROTECTION
  • FREE SSL
  • LETS ENCRYPT INTEGRATION
  • CLOUDFLARE INTEGRATION
  • CPANEL
  • HTTP/2 ENABLED SERVERS
  • PRICE
greengeeks vs ipage vs siteground vs inmotion vs namecheap
  • GREENGEEKS MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING
  • If you already have a domain, you will geta credit that can be used to transfer your existing domain from another registrar.
  • UNLIMITED
    Certain restrictions apply
  • UNLIMITED
    Certain restrictions apply
  • PHONE,TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • That includes 1 free site or cPanel transfer, so if you have a few sites in a single cPanel account they could move them all over for free
  • 30 DAYS
  • Free SEO and Marketing tools and $20 BidVertiser ad credit as well as coupon for Google AdWords for $75 in credit when you spend $25
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • You can manually add Lets Encrypt free certificate
  • You can manually add Lets Encrypt free certificate
  • $3.95/MONTH
ipage vs inmotion vs siteground vs bluehost vs namecheap vs greengeeks
  • IPAGE SHARED WORDPRESS HOSTING WP STARTER PLAN
    WP Starter
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • PHONE,TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • 30 DAYS
  • Google AdWords offer ($100 value) when you spend $25, Bing search credit ($100 value, Yellowpages.com listing, One toll-free phone number (US only)
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • THEY USE VDECK PANEL
  • $3.75/MONTH
a2hosting vs greengeeks vs ipage vs siteground
  • A2HOSTING SHARED LITE PLAN
    Lite plan
  • UNLIMITED
  • UNLIMITED
  • PHONE,TICKET,LIVE CHAT
  • 30 DAYS
  • Free Bing/Yahoo Ad Credits, iContact Email Marketing Trial
  • 1
  • 25
  • 5
  • $4/MONTH

NOTE: Information stated in comparison may be outdated. Be sure to check official sites for most accurate info.

 

Half Dollar Hosting Review

Half Dollar Hosting Ltd. is United Kingdom-based hosting company if you are to believe information found while doing the basic searching. But if you look at the footer of the site it says: Gundecha Industrial Complex, Akurli Road, Kandivali (East), Mumbai 400 101 India.

I don’t know if they are using resell hosting option from one of other hosting companies or they have their own resources. Regardless to that, they offer the following hosting services: Shared Hosting, Hybrid Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Cloud Hosting.

If you think there is not much info about Half Dollar Hosting now, there was even less 2 years ago. Their Twitter account seems to be forgotten, and there is no official Facebook or any other social page to confirm their legitimacy. All that doesn’t sound encouraging for a potential customer.

There are few reviews found when searching. If I check reviews about hosting providers, I like to check negative reviews to see what issue others experience.

I decided to make a leap of faith and take a shot with Half Dollar Hosting service. Mostly because of affordable prices and because I was sick of going through all available hosting providers and making comparisons. I just wanted to get started with my website as soon as possible.

 

Half Dollar Hosting Pricing Plans

Half Dollar Hosting offers personal hosting for free. Where is the catch with free plan? According to them: “There is no catch – if you could not afford it we will allow you to host your site with us for just one-time payment. We do not force ads, we do not “kill” your design – we ask only for  footer slogan: Hosting provided by: HalfDollarHosting – Hosting For Everyone.”

Top-rated personal hosting plan is $1.89 per month with “unlimited everything.” Disk space, data transfer, a number of domains, FTP accounts and more.

Cloud VPS starts at $6.99 monthly with 512 MB of RAM, 5 GB of disk space and a single CPU.  At the high end, 16 GB of RAM, 160 GB of disk space and 8 CPU’s is $159.99 per month.

When started, I was paying 0.85$ per month for hosting. Now you see why I choose them. It was Starter plan on their shared hosting. I don’t remember what exactly were specifics on disk space, data transfer…. but if I recall correctly there were approximately same as now.

 

halfdolarhosting invoice

 

Very soon my needs got bigger, so I decided to go with their Hybrid hosting and purchased Thunder plan. I was paying that about 5.69$ a month. Later I was buying yearly or on a semi-annual basis, so the price was even lower.

As I kept having more sites, I also decided to buy their cPanel cloud hosting. I paid only 3.6$ for six months of hosting. I couldn’t believe. Though I  purchased additional disk space: 1GB and Bandwidth: 10 GB with that plan, disk space was unlimited. Error or not I didn’t care.

 

halfdolarhosting cpanel cloud invoice

 

So I had two plans I was using. Hybrid hosting plan where was my site placed (along with five more) and cPanel (check cPanel vs vDeck differences) cloud hosting plan where I had another 5-6 sites.

I ended my Hybrid plan in November 2015. I moved my site to InMotion hosting and other sites from that plan to another hosting provider.

I did keep cPanel cloud hosting for some time. I use it to store my other projects and sites as it is very affordable than purchasing additional hosting for them. Currently, I am paying it Semi-Annually for 14.21$ and have unlimited bandwidth and storage usage.

 

Downtime

Half Dollar Hosting is re-seller, and therefore dependent on at least one downstream host for availability. While this could be of concern for larger enterprises, the small business, organization or individual site owner/blogger probably shouldn’t be too concerned with downtime.

I must admit there weren’t many downtimes in my two years of usage from 2013. – 2015. Now that I think of, for a price paid, downtimes were surprisingly rare.

 

Load Time

Half Dollar Hosting is not a good choice if you want your site to load fast. When I compare Shared, Hybrid and cPanel cloud plan I didn’t see much difference in faster loading. It is not painfully slow, but still. I didn’t know how much hosting can improve or damage site load speed until I tried other hosting providers.

 

Support

Ah, support. The main reason I decided to move all my important sites away from Half Dollar Hosting and the main reason I almost started to get grays.

In total, I had to open 54 tickets in 2 years. You can only contact support via ticket/email from your dashboard.

There is no chat (though there is one on site but I don’t know if works) or phone option so there is no quick solving problems. This is a big problem if your sites go down, and you need help ASAP.

It is an even greater problem taking into consideration that getting reply can take time from 4 hours to more than a day. It seems there is only one person in charge for support. Every time I had opened a ticket, I  was assigned to Christy Jacob.

Ah, when I remember our correspondences. What a pain in the ass was that. About 90% of the time I knew more than support. Solutions given were far from helpful and in most cases, I had to do research and fix the problem by myself as Christy wasn’t much of help.

Example of support:

Here is one example of my case with support. This was a simple task. Imagine the horrors when some real problem occurs. One time I wanted to pay for hosting. They offer Skrill and PayPal as payment methods. I paid via Skrill.

But billing system is broken and doesn’t recognize payments via Skrill. I was instructed, yes you guess by Christy, to contact billing admin. But billing admin was nowhere to be found. My problem was solved after more than a week when he finally showed.

In the meantime, I was receiving warnings about overdue payment every day. I had to pay again via PayPal so that I don’t lose hosting and my sites go down.

 

Half Dollar Hosting PROS & CONS

Given how cheap they are, you will get a good hosting experience.  Of course, if you’re looking for high-end features, this is not the company to choose.

Pros:

  • Low prices
  • Several plans available
Cons:

  • Terrible support
  • Not good choice for larger sites
  • Slow

 

Half Dollar Hosting Review Summary

You can’t know how good hosting is unless you try. Half Dollar Hosting often leaves an impression as 1 or 2 people run it. For starting slowly or for hosting sites in development, it is not a bad choice.

There are many hosting providers like this one. They mostly have same problems but very affordable prices. I recommend staying away from it if you intend to do serious business with your website.

From the moment I changed hosting provider, I was reborn along with my sites in so many ways. And whatever you do, don’t trust most reviews found on the Internet.

If you are still just starting and not ready to pay for hosting, there are also many free hosting providers. But me sure to check their reviews before starting to build your website there.


DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.

4 thoughts on “Half Dollar Hosting Review – My Experience After 2 Years”

  1. If anyone is looking to start a website and want hosting, try Siteground – they have excellent reviews. I am getting with them in a couple of weeks.

  2. Halfdollarhosting has become a disaster
    Used to be great from 2013 to 2014, then changed hands in 2015 and starting increasing prices and their billing admin will go missing despite running a broken billing system that charges but does not apply the service you paid for. Avoid at all costs. Tom Binder

    1. Yes their billing admin is never available. They had option to pay via Skrill and PayPal but now only have PayPal if I am not mistaken.

      Overall it is clear this is nowhere in rang with other well known hosting providers. Probably only 2 or 3 people manage this.

      But still, for price paid I am satisfied and keep there only test sites and small projects.

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