Quick Facts & Checklist
| Speed | 850 ms (over the last 6 months, updated March 2021) |
| Uptime | 99.93% (over the last 6 months, updated March 2021) |
| 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, the’ve certainly learnt a thing or two.
Their story first began with the purchase of a single domain name and a virtual hosting reseller account.
The company was co-founded by two ambitious, tech-savvy high-school students by the names of Mike Lavrik and John Quaglieri.
Their dream was really simple, to offer data services at adorable prices. However, how they would be able to pull this off 21 years later has been a really interesting journey to say the least.
Their vision led to the formation of a solid partnership and the beginning of InterServer. Now in 2020, InterServer owns and operates two data centres located in Secaucus, NJ and one in Los Angeles, CA.
InterServer provides services, such as virtual hosting, cloud VPS, quick servers, dedicated servers, and colocation.
Now, 21 years later, one thing remains the same – InterServer’s mission 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 and the way their customers operate, John, Mike, and the entire InterServer team have remained truly committed to ensuring that every customer is given support throughout their customer service journey.
This comprehensive InterServer review of will go into exactly how well they’ve performed across their over 22 year history. Here’s an in-depth look at InterServers 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, Just 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 simply cannot afford to get wrong. When it comes to speed, InterServer have 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 850 ms, which really 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 InterServer’s 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 basically 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 at the same time, the response time (the blue line) remained fairly stable.
There was a spike around 50 virtual users and the response averaged out at 503 milliseconds.
BUT the server did return some errors. This means is that 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 do not offer an uptime guarantee across their website. This is a real shame as most their competitors are now offering this as part of their money back guarantees.
After analysing our data from our Interserver test site, we found that the avearge uptime for the last 6 months came in at 99.93% Not bad, this just surpasses the guarantees laid out by most host providers.
What we’ve learnt from COVID19 and the move for more small businesses growing online is that features such as uptime are critical to success.
It is unfortunate that there is no 100% guarantee with uptime, however good to see that InterServer still recorded well.
Pricing & Plans
How Much Does InterServer Cost?
Across their standard web hosting, InterServer offer one complete plan with ‘add ons’ if you need. As a one size fits all package, it is relatively affordable and ticks a lot of boxes for what the modern day online UK user will need.
InterServers ‘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. Because you cannot ‘level up’ or down in structure you could be stuck paying for things you don’t need.
Interservers customer dashboard
We also found that while the InterServer dashboard itself is quite good there is an assumed level of knowledge you’ll require when navigating the site.
It seems for more the seasoned profession who may know a bit about web hosting and what they are after. This will clearly turn off some consumers who are new to web hosting.
Overall, you can essentially get started from as little as £1.80 per month which is dirt cheap considered to other competitors.
InterServer vs Competitors Prices
Help & Support
How Good Is InterServer 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. Similar to their competitors it is great to see that InterServer make some big promises in this space.
InterServers live chat is easily accessible
InterServer offer 24/7 technical support by phone and also have 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 who may be 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 and after their 21 year long 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 a number of features across the plans that really 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 | ✔︎ |
In terms of their easy to use control panel, we love how this looks and how simple it is to get going.
For example, if you are unable to navigate the command line in a Linux server the cPanel provides website owners with a Linux based control panel that gets rid of the confusion you may have had when trying to maintain your website without it.
It sounds straight forward, but this is a really 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 all 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
Looking for a featured packed hosting option?
Security & Protection
Is My Website Secure With InterServer?
InterServer has recognised the challenges faced by UK business and created a security system and promise which addresses exactly 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 start up.
Intersrevers InterShield security
Their SSL certifications work to ensure properly-encrypted data to protect their eCommerce customers and more.
They also have 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.
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, this is a huge plus for this web host provider.
Customer friendly – InterServer offers a wide range of tools and services that help customers easily build their websites and grow their business.
Customer Service – InterServer offer 24/7 support across telephone and messenger. A huge bonus for UK based businesses who 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 great.
InterServer Cons
Limited plans to choose from in ‘one size fits all approach’ – Obviously 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 quite hard to navigate especially the Tips section which we found extremely limiting in our research.
WordPress focused – InterServer clearly love 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. It’s clear that InterServer performs particularly well despite their unusual way of marketing their plans as a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
For some, this won’t matter, but as mentioned for others this will be a complete turn off. 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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