Hostenko is a shared WordPress hosting company that focuses mostly on a Russian and Ukrainian customer base with its website available in both languages. Alongside its simple catalog of hosting products, you’ll find an extensive blog dedicated to all things WordPress, that shows its passion and knowledge for the industry. It has been around since 2002, making it an experienced hosting provider, and provides two data centers in Kiev and Frankfurt.
Features and Ease of Use
Hostenko might not have the greatest range of products or features but it does provide most of the essentials for a simple website hosting solution:
- Free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt
- Multisite hosting up to 25 sites
- Automatic backups with 30 days retention
- Between 5GB and 15GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth with all plans
- Free website transfer services
Hostenko offers a pretty straightforward shared hosting solution. It provides its own custom management dashboard, which isn’t the most modern or professional, but is pretty simple. It can be a little difficult to do things like activate your SSL certificate without help. It’s not cPanel, but it does provide a good amount of control over your hosting.
One thing that is nice is that you can either install WordPress manually if you want to use some custom settings, or you can use the automatic installation tools to do it for you. As part of the latter, you can even choose a template to be installed beforehand.
Automatic backups for 30-days with free restoration does provide a good safety net, and Hostenko is known for running a pretty secure platform.
The biggest problem is that it lacks some features like email hosting and domain registration, which would round out the service.
Pricing and Support
Hostenko only provides a straightforward range of three shared WordPress hosting plans. It doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee, but instead offers a 14-day free trial that’s slightly more limited in terms of the number of websites, the amount of storage, and databases you can have. If you want to upgrade to a paid plan, your website can be transferred as soon as you buy one of the packages.
The pricing is quite expensive, especially for an Eastern European host, considering its relatively low storage, domain, and database limits as well as the fact that a domain isn’t included. However, the silver lining is that the plans come with unlimited traffic and a free SSL certificate. You can also choose from one-month, three-month, six-month, or yearly billing with tiered discounts, and pay via Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal to purchase hosting.
You can reach Hostenko support by email, tickets, phone, and live chat through Skype. They are also active on various social media platforms like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Instead of a traditional knowledge base, Hostenko offers something similar to a blog called WP Cafe, which provides insights into the hosting industry, along with how-to tutorials and videos.
The one-on-one support is pretty good too, with mostly positive reviews online. It’s also quick to reply, and you can see here how I got a reply via email within 10 minutes:
