JustHost Web Hosting Review 2020

JustHost isn’t the most high-profile web hosting service, though it offers an accessible, easy-to-navigate interface and decent shared hosting plans. That said, JustHost is an extremely bare bones service that lacks the wide range of hosting types that one would expect from a top-notch service like DreamHost or Liquid Web, two of our overall Editors’ Choices. Still, JustHost has one advantage over many rival web hosts: price.

It’s Just Shared Hosting

If you visit JustHost in hope of finding a shared web hosting, you’re in luck! That’s the only hosting type that JustHost offers at the moment. In past reviews, we noted that JustHost offered VPS and dedicated hosting, but neither are available anymore. A company representative explained to me that other tiers may be added in the future, however.

JustHost currently offers four Linux-based shared web hosting packages. The Basic plan (starting at $7.99 per month, or as low as $3.95 per month with a three-year commitment) offers just five email accounts, 50GB of storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, and the ability to host one website. The Plus plan (starting at $14.99 per month, or as low as $6.95 per month with a three-year commitment) ups the email total to 100, storage to 150GB, and domains to 10. The Choice Plus plan (starting at $9.45 per month with an one-year plan, or as low as $6.95 per month with a three-year commitment) boasts unlimited email, storage, and websites. Choice Plus lacks month-to-month hosting offerings, but comes with free domain privacy and backup protection.

If you want more powerful shared hosting, JustHost has a Go Pro plan (starting at 24.99 per month, or as low as $14.95 per month with a three-year comitment). It offers everything in the Choice Plus package, plus a dedicated IP address and an SSL certificate. Like JustHost’s other plans, Go Pro doesn’t offer a Windows-based server option.

Those are solid plans, but HostGator ($2.75 Per Month at HostGator) , the Editors’ Choice for shared web hosting, packs more bang for the buck. HostGator’s Linux- or Windows-based shared hosting packages offer across-the-board unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email addresses. That’s hard to beat.

The BlueHost Link

Unfortunately, shared hosting is all that JustHost offers. If you outgrow shared hosting, JustHost recommends taking your advanced hosting needs to BlueHost, its sister service. BlueHost has cloud, dedicated, reseller, VPS, and WordPress plans, though none of them are our top category picks.

If you want to explore the best hosting services, check out our Editors’ Choices, DreamHost/11 Ionos (for cloud hosting), Hostwinds (for reseller and VPS hosting), AccuWeb (for dedicated hosting), and A2 (for WordPress hosting).

Setting Up a Site

Setup is simple with JustHost. I chose the Basic plan and then selected an available domain. I was then presented with a number of extras, some of which were checked off by default, which I dislike. Domain Privacy Protection (99 cents per month) and Site Backup Pro ($2.99 per month) are just two of the many add-on features you’ll have to opt out of, if you don’t want them.

Once you’re finished with all that, you’re greeted by multiple website building tools, including Weebly ($8.00 at Weebly) , a solid web-based website builder. Using Weebly I found it easy to add slideshows, buttons, and YouTube video modules to my test site.

Ecommerce and Security

Adding a store to a JustHost site is also simple. You can visit the Mojo marketplace and choose from a handful of “one-click install” e-commerce options, including ShopSite, Magento, and Opencart. I chose ShopSite. With ShopSite, it was simple to add products, a logo, a banner, and set up social media links. You can track your sales in the dashboard, too. If you need help, a Seller’s Guide is available.

JustHost offers a number of security features that live in the control panel Add-Ons tab. A basic website backup plan is free, while the advanced plan (which costs $19.99 per year) backs up individual files and folders. You can also purchase SSL certificates for secure transactions (starting at $4.17 per month) or SiteLock, which offers malware scanning and removal (starting at $1.99 per month).

Uptime, Downtime

Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of a hosting service. While your site is down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services—and they might not come back.

For this testing, I used a website monitoring tool to track my JustHost-hosted test site’s uptime. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and alerts me if it is unable to contact the site for longer than one minute. I look at the data for the most recent 14 days for each site’s review. In my latest tests, JustHost excelled; with just a lone blip on the radar, the service demonstrated highly dependable uptime.

Customer Service

To test the company’s customer service chops, I called JustHost’s 24/7 support line to find out about the company’s future in regards to adding non-shared plans. I waited less than a minute before a helpful and friendly support person fielded my call and explained the JustHost/BlueHost connection. Overall, I enjoyed the JustHost customer service experience.

JustHost has a money-back guarantee that lets you cancel your web hosting at any time and receive a refund for the remainder of the unused time. That’s a good incentive to at least sample the service.

A One-Trick Pony

If shared hosting is all you need from a web hosting service, JustHost is a decent option, though you should beware the skimpy five email accounts associated with the service’s Basic tier.

The problem is, there’s nowhere else to go with JustHost. If you think there’s any chance at all that your site is going to grow beyond what a shared hosting service can provide, you’re much better off starting out in a service you can grow with. Who wants to go through the hassle of researching, learning, and getting set up on a new web hosting service more times than they have to? For a more complete web hosting service, check out DreamHost, HostGator, or Hostwind, PCMag’s overall top picks for web hosting.