Home / Articles / Web Hosting Guides / PeoplesHost Review

PeoplesHost Review

Company: PeoplesHost

Background: Established in 2015, the people behind PeoplesHost have been in the business for over a decade. During that decade, they worked with major brands, but they eventually gave up the corporate life to take a people-based approach with PeoplesHost. The idea behind PeoplesHost is to provide a customer-focused hosting service that is reliable and fairly priced. Now, at just over a year in business, they have over 500 customers and 1,000 websites up and running.

Starting Price: $8/mo

Currency: USD

Visit Online: https://www.peopleshost.com/

Review Summary & Ratings

4

I received a free account from one of the top management at PeoplesHost. I used the account to run some tests to see if this company lives up to its promises.

In short my experience with PeoplesHost is positive. The hosting company is an above-average, no-overselling, web hosting company. They have a Tier-4 data center (I did a little investigation – seems that PeoplesHost servers are housed in data centers that are SOC 1 (SSAE16) Type II audited facilities and are PCI and HIPAA compliant) located in Orlando, Florida. The data center use dual RAID servers, hardware firewalls, advanced DDOS protection, and redundant cloud core routers with fail over.

PeoplesHost also keep daily backups of all shared customers and weekly backups for customers on a VPS or Dedicated solutions. If you’re focused on performance over price, PeoplesHost might be the right choice. 

Pros: What I Like About PeoplesHost

1. 60 days full money back guarantee

First, there is the money-back guarantee. The 60-day money-back guarantee is one of the longest you’re going to find in the web hosting industry. You’ve heard the phrase “put your money where your mouth is,” and PeoplesHost does just that with this guarantee. It shows that it has confidence in its products. This risk-free guarantee is basically a trial period. If you get one of the shared or VPS Linux or Windows packages and you don’t like it, you can get your money back. It’s that simple.

2. Daily backup

I also really like the backups that PeoplesHost runs. If you have a shared account, it runs daily R1Soft backups. They are included with your package. Then, if you have a VPS account, it runs weekly R1Soft backups. If you have a dedicated hosting account, it has daily offsite backups. There is nothing worse than losing all of your data, and that isn’t a concern when you go with this company. Daily or weekly backups keep your data safe, so that is a huge relief.

Quote from PeoplesHost ToS

Shared Customers (Linux & Windows)
If you are a shared hosting customer we keep daily R1Soft backups of your account. These backups are no additional cost and is part of the hosting package you purchased.

VPS Customers (Linux & Windows)
For our VPS customers we run weekly R1Soft backups of your account. These backups are no additional cost and is part of the hosting package you purchased.

Dedicated Customers
We have off-site daily backups available for an additional fee. Please reach out to support if you have any questions regarding this.

3. Free two website transfers

Free website transfers are also a huge plus. You can transfer up to two websites for free, and that includes Windows sites. While most hosting companies give you one, it’s hard to find a hosting company that will give you two, so this is a huge benefit if you’re running multiple sites.

4. Locked-in hosting price

PeoplesHost renewal prices remain the same as your sign up price. There's no advertised promotional price (like many other cheap hosting service providers) of $3.95/mo then it jumps up to $9.95/mo after the first billing cycle.

PeoplesHost prices on the front of site are the “as low as” prices customers can expect if they commit to a 2 year billing cycle. Pricing for each plan is tiered–the longer the billing cycle the customer can expect to have a lower per month price.

For example, tiered pricing breakdown for our Shared Basic plan by billing cycle:

  • Monthly: $12/mo
  • Quarterly: $11/mo
  • 6 Months: $10/mo
  • 1 Years: $9/mo
  • 2 Years: $8/mo

If a customer signs up for a Shared Basic hosting plan on a 2 year billing cycle, which comes out to be $8/mo, that customer will renew at that same price for their next billing cycle.

Con: Things to Consider Before Purchase PeoplesHost

There are a couple of things you should know before you move forward with PeoplesHost.

1. PeoplesHost = No overselling host

PeoplesHost does not oversell. You get what you pay for with PeoplesHost. That means you don’t have to worry about rushed servers.

As you know, rushed servers lead to lagging network speeds and downtime, so this is a very important point. I spoke to one of the top management (who prefer to remain anonymous) about PeoplesHost's no-overselling policy. His opinion:

[…] our shared hosting we do not oversell. Many customers who have used other web hosts have experienced continuous downtime and reliability issues because these larger hosts place too many customers on those servers to increase their margins. Unfortunately, people are attracted to low prices and don't realize that the larger hosts are able to offer those lower prices because they are overselling space on their servers.

Not overselling positively impacts our business in the long run. As mentioned above, a mixture of oversold servers on “unlimited” shared hosting opens a web host up to abuse and high resource usage, which is followed up by poor support and downtime issues.

Since we do not oversell our shared servers we are able to focus on providing a better support experience to a smaller number of customers on servers that aren't abused with high resource usage. Meaning, our customers have a highly reliable service with improved speed and uptime. The phrase “you get what you pay for” stands true.

Customers are warned before reaching the limits of their account's alloted resources (disk space and bandwidth). This gives them time to upgrade to a higher plan with additional resources or identify areas they can make improvements (e.g., deleting old files, old backups sitting in their public_html, etc).

PeoplesHost Uptime Review

PeopleHost uptime January 2019
PeopleHost Uptime for January 2019: 100%
PeopleHost uptime December 2018
PeopleHost uptime for the past 30 days (screen captured December 9, 2018): 99.81%.
PeoplesHost uptime August 2016
PeoplesHost uptime for the past 30 days (screen captured August 24, 2016): 99.97%
PeoplesHost hosting uptime for June/July 2016
PeoplesHost hosting uptime for June/July 2016: 99.92%. Tracking started on May 28, 2016.

PeoplesHost Speed Test

PeoplesHost Bitcatcha Speed test
Speed test at Bitcatcha – our test sites at PeoplesHost responded swiftly to requests coming from United States.
PeoplesHost Speed test from South America - TTFB: 896ms
Speed test from South America – TTFB: 896ms. Server speed rated “A” by WebPage Test.

PeoplesHost Client Area

We signup PeopleHost and tested the server performance. Here's how the user dashboard looks like.

PeoplesHost user dashboard
A quick glance on PeoplesHost user dashboard.

PeoplesHost invoices and payment
Manage your payment and invoices under “Billing”

PeoplesHost Hosting Price and Plans

PeoplesHost has three main hosting plans for your website needs. You can get shared, VPS, or dedicated hosting. Let’s take a look at each of these options.

Shared Hosting 

PeoplesHost shared hosting pricing
PeoplesHost shared hosting starts at $8/mo

PeoplesHost offers WordPress, Windows and Linux shared hosting plans. The WordPress and Linux web hosting plans range in price from $8 to $21 a month for a two-year subscription. You can get anywhere from 5 GB to 50 GB in disk space and 10 GB to 60 GB in bandwidth.

The Windows shared hosting plans range from $10 to $23 a month for a two-year subscription. Depending on the Windows plan that you get, you can receive anywhere from 5 GB all the way up to 50 GB of disk space and 10 GB to 60 GB of bandwidth.

All three WordPress, Windows and Linux shared hosting plans include free domain names and unlimited websites and sub-domain names. They also both include free email addresses. In addition, they come with the host’s 99.9% uptime guarantee and 24/7 online support. On the other hand, Windows and Linux plans are eCommerce ready, it is good for people who plan to build eCommerce website.

I was pleased with all of the resources available with the shared hosting plans. Whether you go with the minimum hosting plan or upgrade to a top-tier plan, shared hosting from PeoplesHost doesn’t lack power or resources.

FeaturesBasicChoicePro
Storage (SSD)2 GB20 GB50 GB
Data Transfer10 GB30 GB60 GB
Free DomainYesYesYes
Let's EncryptYesYesYes
SSH AccessYesYesYes
Signup Price (2 year)$8/mo$11/mo$21/mo

VPS Hosting

PeoplesHost VPS hosting pricing
PeoplesHost VPS hosting starts at $29/mo

VPS hosting is also available for both Windows and Linux. Windows ranges from $39 a month to $117 a month and Linux ranges from $29 a month to $78 a month for a two-year subscription. Both come with four to eight CPU cores, two IPs, and 30 GB to 100 GB of disk space. They also have 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth, along with a free domain name.

Dedicated Hosting

PeoplesHost dedicated servers pricing
PeoplesHost dedicated servers start at $199/mo

PeoplesHost’s managed dedicated servers are available in Basic, Pro, and Enterprise packages that range in price from $199 a month all the way up to $499 a month for a two-year subscription. They run on a Dell PowerEdge server and offer weekly free backups. These packages range from 8 GB to 32 GB of memory and include a 1U chassis.

Reseller Hosting

PeoplesHost reseller hosting pricing
PeoplesHost dedicated servers start at $29/mo

VPS hosting is also available for both Windows and Linux. Windows ranges from $39 a month to $117 a month and Linux ranges from $29 a month to $78 a month for a two-year subscription. Both come with 30 GB to 100 GB SSD Storage RAID10, unmetered premium bandwidth, unlimited websites, free domain name and weekly free backups.

Verdict: Do I Recommend PeoplesHost Hosting?

Overall, PeoplesHost is an above-average web hosting company. It’s at a reasonable price, especially since it doesn’t oversell its products. This is the real selling point for PeoplesHost and the reason why it’s so hard to compare it with other hosting companies. Many hosting companies are cheaper and they offer unlimited services. However, those services are not truly unlimited. When you go with one of those companies, you expose yourself to the risk of rushed servers (that would lead to a sluggish performance).

If you’re focused on performance over price, PeoplesHost might be the right choice.

Photo of author

Article by Jerry Low

Keep Reading