We spoke with the team at
CiviHosting about how their performance, knowledge, security, and customer service makes them a popular choice, especially for those migrating away from those “big name” hosts.
How is CiviHosting different from other hosting companies?
That is a great question! At
CiviHosting, we focus on the “boutique” hosting market, meaning we offer only the very best service and support, at a slightly higher price than other hosts. Most web hosts today, especially the larger ones, focus on low prices and economies of scale. They may provide inexpensive hosting, but they cannot possibly provide hundreds of thousands of clients the same service and support that a smaller firm like ours can.
The 24/7 power we provide – a 10-minute response time! – is unparalleled. Each member of our Support Team and Sales Office staff have at least seven years of experience in the web hosting business, so we know what we are doing, and can provide answers and solutions to just about any question or problem.
With web hosting, like most things, “you get what you pay for.” So, if server uptime, site load speed, and responsive support are important issues for you, then the service we provide is well worth the price.
What are the differences between your Regular, Extended, and Extended Plus shared hosting plans?
Our Regular and Extended plans are mostly the same – except that Extended includes more disk space, more databases, and more transfer space. Both plans have a soft limit of 100 CPU minutes per day.
Our Extended Plus extends that CPU limit to 300 minutes and the limits for MySQL usage and total database size are increased. This plan is essentially a souped-up shared hosting plan for a site that has outgrown regular shared hosting but is not yet ready for a VPS.
What are your VPS Hosting plans, and how are they different from Shared Hosting?
We have three sizes of VPS plans, depending on the amount of resources a site requires. Aside from the resource provided, up to 1 TB disk space and 8 CPU cores and 32 GB of memory, the actual usage on a VPS is not metered – you are free to use the resources provided as much as you want. These plans also have extended backups.
All our VPS plans come with dedicated hardware resources, so nothing is shared with any other account.
Do you offer Web Apps Hosting?
Yes, we have two types of Web Apps hosting accounts, and all our VPSs are also Web App ready.
What operating systems and programming languages can run on your servers?
All our servers run only Linux, and we support MySQL, PHP, PERL, Python, and Ruby.
Is SSL available?
Yes. Free Let’s Encrypt certificates are available on all accounts with a simple one-click installer. We also offer commercial SSLs for an additional fee.
Do you have backup and recovery services?
Backups are run every 12 hours on all servers on all data, including files, databases, and emails. We keep those online for seven days for shared hosting and 15 days for VPSs. These backups are physically stored on a separate server, and we have never “lost“ anyone’s backup, as other hosts have.
Data restoration is available to all clients via their hosting Control Panel, or they can contact us at any time, and we can do that for them.
Do you have migration services for customers with existing web sites?
We provide free migration services for all our clients.
How can you guarantee a 99.9% uptime?
We have three teams who actively monitor our servers and maintain the security of our systems. Security tests are also performed regularly by our QA and admin teams, and our servers and our networks are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, to keep them online and healthy. We watch out for server abuse, security breaches, and even catch spammers who try to use your site as a spam relay. Monitoring systems include automated ones (Linux daemons) and human ones. We have maintained 99.9% server uptime since 2007.
How are your servers protected against hackers and other cyberthreats?
We take great efforts to keep client data secure. Physical security is achieved via:
- Advanced smoke detection and fire suppression systems
- 24/7 secured access with motion sensors, video surveillance and security breach alarms
And backed up by:
- A redundant network of multiple fiber trunks from multiple sources
- Redundant power on the premises
- Multiple backup generators
Our virtual security includes:
- 24/7 server monitoring team
- No SSH access by default (SSH access can be enabled, however)
- No remote access to MySQL (by default)
Our general IT security is world-class, and we are not aware of one case of a server security breach since we started hosting in 2006.
What support is available to your customers?
Our Support Team is available 24/7/365 and will respond within 10 minutes. They provide support for all aspects of the server and the Control Panel, including email, connectivity, FTP, etc. They also provide some support for web software such as WordPress and CiviCRM.
While our Sales Office is not online 24/7, they are online almost every day and provide more advanced support for popular open source web packages such as WordPress, MediaWiki, CiviCRM, and Nextcloud.
