Quick Facts & Checklist
Updated January 2022
| Speed | 846 ms (June 2021 to January 2022) |
| Uptime | 100% (June 2021 to January 2022) |
| Features | Unlimited bandwidth, Unlimited Storage, Free SSL Certificate, Free CDN, Unlimited Email Accounts, 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee |
| Hosting Plans | Shared, WordPress, VPS, and Dedicated Servers |
| Support | 24/7 Live Chat, Phone, Email, Knowledge Base |
| Pricing | Plans start from £1.80 per month |
InterServer Overview
What Is InterServer?
InterServer first began in 1999, and after 22 years in the web hosting space, they’ve certainly learned a thing or two. Two ambitious, tech-savvy high-school students co-founded the company, Mike Lavrik and John Quaglieri.
Their story first began with the purchase of a single domain name and a virtual hosting reseller account.
Their dream was straightforward, to offer data services at attractive prices. However, how they would pull this off 21 years later has been a fascinating journey.
InterServer owns two data centers located in Secaucus, NJ, and one in Los Angeles, CA.
InterServer provides services, such as virtual hosting, cloud VPS, dedicated servers, and colocation.
Now, 21 years later, one thing remains the same – InterServer’s mission is to provide quality service at affordable rates to all of its customers worldwide.
Their website claims that no matter what has changed in their business, the entire InterServer team has remained committed to ensuring that every customer is given support throughout their customer service journey.
This comprehensive InterServer review will go into exactly how well they’ve performed across their over 22-year history. Here’s an in-depth look at InterServer’s pros and cons after signing up, paying for their hosting service, and putting it through its paces.
Looking to build your own website?
Speed & Reliability
So, How Quick Is InterServer?
Nothing says professional web hosting servers better like great speed and accessibility. This is something that business owners in today’s online world cannot afford to get wrong. When it comes to speed, InterServer has an excellent history across the web hosting space.
InterServer Speed Test
As you can see in our screenshot above. InterServer’s average page loading time of 846 ms isn’t that impressive compared to other hosts on the market. A slow website almost always means less traffic and, therefore, less revenue.
Load Impact & Stress Test Results
However, when measuring the speed of a hosting server, it’s important to look at more than just its loading time.
To test how their server would respond with increased traffic, we used a testing tool called K6 (formerly Load Impact) to send virtual users to our test site.
So we ran a load impact and stress test simulating 50 active visitors over 5 minutes. This tells us if our test site would load as quickly when multiple users are using the site.
InterServer K6 Stress Test Results
As you can see from our screenshot above, even when 50 virtual users (the grey line) were accessing the site simultaneously, the response time (the blue line) remained pretty stable.
There was a spike around 50 virtual users, and the response averaged out at 503 milliseconds.
BUT the server did return some errors. If you have a small website, then InterServer shared hosting will work well for you.
However, any traffic spikes will diminish your website performance. Installing a WordPress caching plugin can help with this. However, if your web server is slow, caching will not make much of a difference.
InterServer Hosting Uptime
When assessing the uptime, InterServer currently does not offer an uptime guarantee across their website. This is a real shame, as most of their competitors are now offering this as part of their money-back guarantees.
After analysing our InterServer test site data, we found that the average uptime for the last six months came in at a perfect 100%. Not bad, and this surpasses the guarantees laid out by most host providers.
We’ve learned from COVID19, and the move for more small businesses growing online that features such as uptime is critical to success.
Pricing & Plans
How Much Does InterServer Cost?
Across their standard web hosting, InterServer offers one complete plan with ‘add on’s if you need. As a one size fits all package, it is relatively affordable. It ticks many boxes for what the modern-day online UK user will need.
InterServer’s ‘One size fits all’ shared hosting plan
Whats Included In The Standard Web hosting Package?
Now, it does need to be explained that this type of plan structure will not suit everyone. Commonly, most web hosting providers offer between three to five different plans or levels to choose from.
Upgrade When As You Grow
This can help consumers pay for the services they need and upgrade as and when their business grows. The problem with the one size fits all approach is that it simply won’t suit everyone. You could be stuck paying for things you don’t need because you cannot ‘level up’ or down in structure.
Interserver’s customer dashboard
While the InterServer dashboard is quite good, we also found that you’ll require an assumed level of knowledge when navigating the site.
It seems that the seasoned professional may know a bit about web hosting and what they are after. This will turn off some consumers who are new to web hosting.
Overall, you can get started from as little as £1.80 per month, which is dirt cheap compared to other competitors.
InterServer vs. Competitors Prices
Help & Support
How Good Is InterServer’s Support?
We all know how much customer support can either make or break an online experience. To put it simply, customer support levels can be the difference between a good web provider and a very poor one. Like their competitors, it is great to see that InterServer makes some big promises in this space.
InterServer’s live chat is easily accessible
InterServer offers 24/7 technical support by phone and also has an email/messenger option. Across similar web hosting provider reviews, we’ve noted that this level of support is crucial.
For UK-based business owners who need urgent support dealing with a client or customer in a different time zone, the 24/7 support makes a huge difference.
We love this feature on InterServer. After their 21-year history, it doesn’t surprise us that they’ve offered this level of support.
Does expert support matter to you?
Features & Products
What Features & Services Do InterServer Offer?
We’ve already listed out quite a few (of the many) features on InterServer so far. However, there are many features across the plans that stood out to us.
InterServer Shared Hosting Features & Comparison
| Main Features | Standard Web Hosting Plan |
| Websites | Unlimited |
| Storage | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited |
| Free Domain Name | ✖︎ |
| Free SSL Certificate | ✔︎ |
| Daily Backups | Weekly |
| 24/7 customer service | ✔︎ |
| Money back guarantee | ✔︎ |
We love how this looks and how simple it is to get going in terms of their easy-to-use control panel.
For example, suppose you are unable to navigate the command line in a Linux server. In that case, the cPanel provides website owners with a Linux-based control panel that eliminates the confusion you may have had when trying to maintain your website without it.
It sounds straight forward, but this is a nice feature.
Easy to install WordPress from InterServers cPanel
cPanel provides tools for admins, resellers, and end-user website owners to successfully manage and control their website through a simple web browser.
cPanel works best on a dedicated or virtual private server that runs CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, FreeBSD, and Cloud Linux.
Over 450 Cloud Apps Available
Plenty of apps to choose from
Are you looking for a featured packed hosting option?
Security & Protection
Is My Website Secure With InterServer?
InterServer has recognised the challenges faced by UK businesses and created a security system and promise which addresses precisely what customers want.
The security features by InterServer do a great job at combating these challenges. Nothing over the top, but a good enough job while you startup.
InterServer’s InterShield security
Their SSL certifications work to ensure properly-encrypted data to protect their eCommerce customers and more.
They also have the above industry-standard enhanced security suite, which across web hosting reviews, has received positive feedback.
Free SSL certificate is easy to install
Customers can be assured that the levels of security provided by InterServer are adequate. However, due to the one plan fits all scenario, you may want to add on additional security features as and when you need them.
Pros & Cons
What We Like & Dislike About InterServer
InterServer Pros
Low-cost plans – InterServer plans start at £1.80 per month. Honestly, we’d struggle to find something lower than that price, and this is a massive plus for this web host provider.
Customer-friendly – InterServer offers a wide range of tools and services that help customers quickly build their websites and grow their business.
Customer Service – InterServer offers 24/7 support across telephone and messenger. A massive bonus for UK-based businesses that may be selling in different timezones.
Easy to use control panel – We love the simplicity of this! Not just visually, but also the functionality is excellent.
InterServer Cons
Limited plans to choose from in the ‘one size fits all approach’ – Not ideal if you are new to web hosting and need more guidance. This may not be the hosting platform for you.
Website navigation – The InterServer website can be pretty hard to navigate, especially the Tips section, which we found extremely limiting in our research.
WordPress focused – InterServer loves using WordPress. If you are unfamiliar with WordPress, you may find InterServer quite challenging at first.
Pricing increase – As you begin to find the features you need, you may end up ‘adding on’ quite a significant amount in costs. Be wary of this.
What Are The Alternatives To InterServer?
Hostinger Best Overall Cheap Host
Bluehost #2 Rated Cheap host
A2 Hosting #3 cheap Hosting
HostGator Great value option
DreamHost Great Customer Support
Final Thoughts
Do we recommend InterServer?
Yes, we do. InterServer performs particularly well even though their unusual marketing plans as a ‘one size fits all approach.
This won’t matter for some, but this will be a complete turn-off, as mentioned for others. We hope that this InterServer review has provided some clarity as to where you’d see yourself getting the most out of this provider.
Ready to give InterServer a try?
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