Before I get started with this post, I’m going to go ahead and disclose that I AM an affiliate for NameHero. I’m also an affiliate for Hostgator, Bluehost, Arvixe, Contabo and other hosting companies.
I like to think that I can avoid being biased in a review. With hosting, most companies suck, it’s a matter of picking the one that isn’t sucking as much as the others. My experience with NameHero has been a pleasant one so far, I hope that doesn’t change!
The problem with hosting companies, is that today, a company can be wonderful, and in a month from now, they can get bought out by EIG and start turning into shit.
My Problem With Hosting
I have a lot of different sites, on a lot of different servers.
One of my favorite companies for a long time was HostGator. They were dependable, fast, excellent support.
Now, they’re still semi dependable, but if you have a support issue, it’s going to take an hour to get through to someone and chances are they will create a ticket and pawn you off on the next tier of support which will take another 2 days or so to get any kind of response.
I’ve had so many issues with them recently, that I moved to a few different servers.
This blog, is still hosted on HostGator, but it won’t be for long. I expect to move to NameHero in the next couple weeks.
HostGator isn’t the only one in decline though. Arvixe was a company that a year ago was better than HostGator, even when HostGator was excellent. The problem is, they were bought by EIG.
EIG is a company that buys out a lot of hosting companies. They cram as many sites on a server as possible, and chances are if you are unhappy with one host they own, you’re unknowingly moving to another hosting company that they own.
Arvixe was great… then it wasn’t. I had a couple sites hosted there that needed to be moved because of significant downtime. Apparently, they still have downtime issues. Surprise, it’s now owned by EIG.
Bluehost is owned by EIG as well, and while they have still been mostly dependable, they have declined in support and performance, dramatically in the last 2 or 3 years.
ASmallOrange Hosting, was considered to be one of the best, then they were also bought out by EIG. They haven’t deteriorated quite as fast as others, but I have a feeling that is inevitably going to happen sooner than later.
It’s hard to find a hosting company that you can be happy with, and remain happy with. NameHero is NOT owned by EIG.
Why I Tried Out NameHero for Hosting
I heard about it from a friend, and decided to look into the options they have.
The reason I really wanted to try it was because it is a cloud hosting company, which is really attractive to me. Think about how the cloud has grown in the last couple years, and the advantages it offers with different forms of storage, couldn’t we benefit from it in the form of hosting?
I like the idea of cloud hosting because it’s more dependable than traditional companies like HostGator and Bluehost.
Here’s an infographic, courtesy of NameHero to help show the benefits:
Cloud hosting, certainly looks like the most attractive option. No need to worry about system failures, RAM upgrades, hard drive failure, etc.
You have more flexibility to grow, better performance, and seems like the logical choice.
One thing that NameHero touts in the presale materials is that their servers are up to 9X faster than regular apache servers. In my opinion, that’s an exaggeration but it certainly is faster.
My Experience With NameHero
I’ve had NameHero for a few months now. I’m hosting a few sites, performance is great, uptime is great, support is wonderful.
Most actively, I’m using NameHero for an affiliate site I’ve been working on, and have talked about in previous income reports.
I have never had a performance problem. I never have witnessed any downtime at all.
I did have a few support issues, that most people won’t have. I was just confused on setting up private name servers along with a few other things that have no effect on a website or the hosting itself and more to do with advanced configuration.
When I had those support issues, I was a little upset they didn’t have a number to call on their website. They don’t offer phone based support, just email based support.
To my surprise, their email support is lightning fast. I commented on their response times and they mentioned this:
You’re welcome on the response time. We try to get it within 15 – 25 minutes during the day, sometimes a bit longer at night.
I needed support later on at night as well, around 2AM or so, and received a response in 10 minutes that solved my problem.
The longest I have waited for support to respond is 17 minutes.
As for page speed on their hosting, I have clocked in consistently under a 1 second load. Granted, they aren’t large sites, but that’s pretty good performance!
Shared Vs. Reseller
I don’t use shared hosting anymore. Even though Reseller hosting is essentially “shared” it offers a higher level of protection.
With shared hosting and multiple sites, you run the risk of one site being exploited and then your entire root and file/folder structure also being compromised. With reseller accounts, you can have a separate cPanel and FTP for each domain name, which offers a bit more protection.
The main reason I like resellers though, is because of how much easier it is to manage…and the nice benefit of semi passive, recurring income.
If you handle client websites, a reseller account is a necessity.
Everyone likes recurring income right? With a reseller account, like I mentioned before, each website will have a separate cPanel, FTP, etc. You pay a flat monthly fee for your account and set amount of total bandwidth and disk space. You then, can charge your clients individually for monthly hosting and maintenance.
Hosting and maintenance is such an overlooked service for agencies and consultants. People think that since hosting is so cheap, why would people pay you larger amounts?
The answer is simple… customer service… knowing that someone else is on top of server issues, making backups, and is there in case a problem arises they don’t have to stay on the phone or jump through a million hoops to have the problem fixed.
99% of businesses I’ve sold to, had no problem paying a $300+/yearly fee, or $50/mo fee. The sweet spot for me was between $350-400/year.
If you’ve sold 10 websites, and they’re hosting with another host, you’re missing out on $3,500-$4,000/year. 20 websites? That’s 7-8K/year… that can replace your mortgage payment, car payment, you could invest the money in your IRA…
It’s not chump change. It’s money you’re leaving on the table if you aren’t offering hosting and maintenance service.
Final Thoughts
One of the reasons I was trying out NameHero, is because I’ve been looking for other hosting companies I can confidently recommend to people.
Everyone is promoting the big companies like HostGator and Bluehost, even though they are under-performing. A lot of people choose to promote them because of the large commissions their affiliate program provides.
Smaller companies like NameHero, will often be exponentially better but don’t give out as much affiliate commission so you don’t have many bloggers or marketers wanting to promote them. I guess it comes down to the almighty dollar for most.
Interested in learning more? Check them out and let me know what you think!
Have a tip for hosting? Have you tried NameHero? Let me know in the comments below!
Great post Nathan. How do we determine if our hosting company is owned by EIG?
Thanks Jason, a partial list can be found here on their wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_International_Group there’s others as well. Who do you use for hosting?
Nathan,
I had a look in on NameHero. Looks good for money/ biz/ blog sites.
Reseller plan looks perfect for hosting, maintenance of new clients’ sites
Not sure I should mention this here, but I’d like your opinion anyway.
Just a few days ago on the sales page of another IM blog, I read / saw
the owner/coach advocating the use of cloud based hosting for PBN sites.
That biz has paid membership, SEO+PBN training, hosting, software etc.
Persuasive sales page – text and video – better security, free PBN slots ….
yada yada yada …
BTW, His paid software provides ease of access to the cloud hosting platforms,
but he makes a case that the benefits of the software outweigh the cost.
Do you see cloud based hosting as the way of the future for SEO ?
Seem like cloud based hosting is gaining popularity with SEO’ers, doesn’t it ?
Your thoughts please.
PS: I don’t mean no diss to your blog by mentioning the other site here.
Didn’t name other site nor owner for same reason.
Cheers, Maxx
Maxx thanks for the comment and adding additional value to this topic. I don’t see cloud hosting as the future of SEO, I see it more as the future, in general lol. If you were to use, for example, a cloud based reseller account like NameHero, you’re still leaving a footprint with a PBN. Even with a unique IP address and unique, private, nameservers, you’re still hosted on the same location. What are the chances of that?
I can’t comment on the product or membership you’re talking about since I don’t know what it is. If you would like, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it for you, just shoot me an email. I do kind of have reservations about why software tying into a cloud hosting platform would really be beneficial. Are we talking hosting, or more of a windows VPS type deal?
Cloud hosting is definitely gaining popularity, not just with SEOs but people in general. I wasn’t even interested in it for SEO and PBN purposes, I think the majority of people looking for cloud solutions, also don’t care whether it’s good for SEO or not. I think it is probably a misconception that it benefits SEO.
Thanks again for the comment Maxx!
Thank you for the response Nathan.
According to the author, who I’m sure you know, or heard of:
“extensive (think millions) IP diversity and huge data base coverage…”
Give me an email address and I’ll send you a link / URL/ product name whatever…
Cheers, Maxx
My email is just my name and at this domain.
Still not sure why that makes a difference though, anyone can order a dedicated IP address, the problem with the footprint is rarely the IP assuming different C-Blocks… database coverage, not sure that has to do with anything lol.
Happy to take a look at this though and see.
Will they move my existing hosting for me? I know some places offer that. I just don’t want to deal with it.
I saw that they advertise that they will move your stuff for you within 48 hours. You might want to double check beforehand, but I’m pretty sure they do!
What a GREAT post! I currently have a resellers account with HG and I got on before they were bought by EIG.I immediately noticed a difference. I’m definitely going to check out Name Hero and get moved ASAP.
Hey Chanel, thanks for the comment.
Yeah, it’s really unfortunate about HG, I still have a reseller with them but the support is atrocious. NameHero support is awesome, really love how they handle support and how quick they are. I think they’re still relatively small, so I hope they’re able to keep it up once they scale but so far so good.
I believe they will actually be able to transfer your reseller for you. Or at least keep all the settings and configurations you have in WHM and install it on NameHero. Of course, all the nameservers of the domains you currently host would have to be changed, so that’s the biggest problem with migrating but I definitely recommend trying them out.
Really awesome article, but in my blog i will be promoting Blue host. what is the affiliate payout of namehero ?
$50 per shared hosting, $100 for reseller. My readers are mostly freelancers, agencies, and those handling client work so reseller hosting makes sense for them. I don’t like promoting EIG companies, and it seems every affiliate promotes BlueHost.
Hi there. It’s been a year since this post and since reviews on name hero don’t abound online… I was wondering how the service had been with you? Thanks
NameHero has been excellent still. I think just in the past 6 months, I only had to send in one support ticket but it wasn’t even about the service, just something I was curious about doing. Very helpful support, and the quality of service is great.