InterServer is a New Jersey-based company that has been providing fully-featured low-cost Webhosting service since 1999 and offers the best customer service. InterServer has adopted changes but did not change the place of the core staff of managers and directors that have been in place from the first day and now have grown enough to manage their datacenter. In this article, We are going to conduct a review of their web hosting services by doing a few tests that’ll make it easier for you to decide whether it is suitable for you or not.
InterServer is a budget-friendly provider and has four data centers in the USA, and they specialize in Following Web Services:
- Standard Web Hosting
- ASP.NET Web Hosting
- WordPress VPS Hosting
Their VPS Hosting has a variety of options to choose from, including Windows-based VPS, Linux VPS, WordPress Configured VPS, while providing options to select the location of data centers.
Table of Contents
PROS of InterServer Web Hosting
- 99.99 Uptime Guarantee on all of their services
- 30 Days Refund Option in case you don’t is satisfied with their services.
- Their servers connected to the internet with a Fiber network.
- Their plan starts from only $4.50 a month and provides Windows or WordPress hosting in $5 and $8, respectively.
- VPS hosting starts from $6 a month with multiple OS to choose from and separate pre-configured options for WordPress.
- SSDs boost site loading speed up to 200% faster
CONS of InterServer Web Hosting
The majority of customers are satisfied, but there is always a dark side to everything. Services of InterService has some drawback, and we have mentioned them below:
- While using the Shared hosting platform, the client will be automatically moved to low-performance SATA from SSD if usage exceeds 1GB.
- Non-technical or newbie InterServer VPS is hard to use because of the manual setup of software like cPanel and Softculous.
- The Service is only available on the East Coast of the USA. If you are not in the USA, you will have to use CDN.
- Their user interface needs a lot of improvement; it is undoubtedly not easy to use one.
Money-Back Guarantee
If your website goes down for any reason, it can cost you a great deal in terms of revenue and potential new clients.
Try InterServer for yourself. If you decide for whatever reason, it isn’t ideal for your needs, you can receive a refund within 30 days. However, this refund option is available for their shared hosting plans only.
Our Experience and Tests
InterServer doesn’t claim to be the best, like other hosting providers, and yet promises to maximize customer satisfaction. To Evaluate, we have tried the different tests on our website hosted on InterServer hosting. The test completed with the help of different themes because you should not always blame your hosting for the performance. We have experience in WordPress, and that’s the reason we installed WordPress and tried multiple themes to test the company’s claims of providing reliable web hosting.
Using an UnOptimized Theme
To Begin the test first, we uploaded a theme that was not optimized, and our website got just 5 points in Google Page Speed Test for mobile and 32 on for Desktop version out of 100. I want to make it clear that we intentionally set up a theme that is not optimized for testing purposes; it’s not the hosting that caused these speed scores to be too low.
Using an Optimized Theme
Then again, we uploaded a Newspaper theme (a well-optimized theme in terms of hosting) and rechecked the score and this time, and we got 84 Marks on the Desktop view and 92 Marks on the Mobile view out of 100.
Let me explain what happened here: we got 5/100 (Mobile view) and 32/100 (Desktop view) when we used a theme that is not optimized. When we used an optimized theme like Newspaper Theme, we got 82/100 (Mobile view) and 92/100 (Desktop view). This concludes that to have a better performance/speed score of the website, both hosting and theme you are using should be good. If your hosting is good and your theme is not optimized, then you will get the poor performance. This test ensures that Interserve is a reliable hosting because the Newspaper theme consumes a lot of resources from the server end.
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Installation of Plugins
We also decided to continue this test and installed some of the plugins. The installation was in bulk, we chose to choose multiple plugins from the list, and when we clicked on the install button, it almost took 1-3 seconds to install all of them.
Bulk Plugins Installation Took Only Seconds
Get Better Score through Optimization
To conclude our test, we decided to upload another theme, which is a Resume Theme, and got the same low score due to poorly optimization, as shown in the figure below. However, it is worth mentioning here with little bit tweaks and optimization, and you can easily get a higher speed score on Interserver hosting with a theme that is not well optimized.
Next, we used some of the LiteSpeed Cache Plugin to optimize the theme we just uploaded, and the result much better than the previous test.
If you are new to the technical site it would like to mention hosting is not the only thing that matters for the speed, having an optimized theme makes the user experience much better.
Realtime Users Testing
We didn’t stop there, and the next phase was sending live traffic through (We did it through Facebook). Even though the site was hosted on a shared plan, it survived 160 realtime users. We are using Cloudflare as CDN that provides a lot of supports but a shared hosting sustaining that many live users are a good sign.
Up/Down Time
Another critical aspect to consider while testing web hosting is its Uptime. Most of the hosting companies claim to provide a 99.99% uptime guarantee, but it’s just a claim most of the time. We did conduct an Uptime test on InterServer, and the downtime recorded was 0.00%, while Uptime was 100% in the last 24hours, 7 days, and 30 days respectively.
Our Verdict
InterServer offers plenty of options in the types of plans and the various inclusions available. Plans can be used for a huge variety of purposes, and their WordPress optimized VPS option is undoubtedly an affordable one. Overall, it is an affordable yet well-performing and fast web hosting service. The major drawback is their management interface, and it is a bit tricky, not a user-friendly one.
