New Zealand host Simplehost Limited was founded in 2005 to offer shared hosting, managed VPS hosting, email services, and DNS services. The web hosting sits on servers in data centers located in Auckland (New Zealand) and California (U.S.A.).
Simplehost’s simple website is in English, and all prices are displayed in New Zealand dollars.
Features and Ease of Use
Simplehost’s four shared hosting plans — Starter, Basic, Advanced, and Ruby on Rails — provide you with:
- 99.7% uptime
- SSD storage
- PHP, Apache, Nginx
- Unlimited email accounts
- FTP access
- Daily backups
The Starter plan is suitable for small-scale hosting that doesn’t need a database. It comes with 50 MB SSD storage, 1 GB bandwidth, website statistics, and PHP version 7.0.
The Basic plan is more suitable for still-small websites that have some images, music, and even videos. It provides PHP version 7.0, unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificate, website statistics, SFTP, and Apache or Nginx.
The Advanced package provides the same features as the Basic plan, plus 2 GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, MySQL, Python, and SSH access. It could suit startup websites and bloggers.
The highest Ruby on Rails package includes the Phusion Passenger 3 app server that makes it a lot easier to deploy Ruby web applications with Nginx.
Hosted websites sit on SSD storage, and Simplehost performs daily backups to safeguard your data. You get a 99.7% uptime guarantee, but this is significantly lower than the industry average.
Pricing and Support
Simplehost’s prices could be considered high for the limited amount of storage on offer. However, you do get free SSL with most plans, no setup fees, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can also get credit for referring a friend to this host.
Please contact the company’s customer support team through telephone, ticket, or email. We aim to respond within 15 to 60 minutes. However, I didn’t receive any response even after 24 hours. If you need to resort to self-support, you will find a helpful set of frequently asked questions.
