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Marketing Automation with Everything Under One Roof

HubSpot includes landing pages, CRM, social media manager, calendar integration, pro-sales tools, blogging, email marketing, and a service interaction manager all within a single platform.

ActiveCampaign has most of the same features, however, relies on integrating landing pages and blogging with 3^rd party solutions.

There are pros and cons to having increased functionality within one platform. Being able to use a single tool for all your CRM and marketing automation needs is helpful because you can log into one place.

The ability to get meaningful results from reporting features is less cumbersome and faster when using one platform as opposed to one that uses 3^rd-party integrations.

Design Features

You can design landing pages, calls-to-action, emails, and forms in HubSpot. However, the user interface in their design manager is not very intuitive and requires some technical knowledge.

If you want to use one of their templates for your own design, it is much easier than if you’re looking to make changes or create your own.

ActiveCampaign doesn’t include a landing page creator. You must integrate with a 3rd party service. However, for emails, their design feature is easier to use for non-technical users.

You can use one of their templates, start from scratch, or import the code for one you have created on another platform.

HubSpot’s system doesn’t work well with imported code whereas ActiveCampaign plays nicer with your code.

Email Marketing Automation

We have already discussed above the design features for emails with both platforms. As far as the ability to automate your email marketing, they are very similar.

One of the main differences is that ActiveCampaign has a better workflow process. It is easier to segment your lists by branching off into “Yes/No” conditions.

File Manager/Media Dashboard

HubSpot has a file manager where you can store, images, videos, PDFs, and any other file type you need to have access to for your marketing.

ActiveCampaign does not. This can make sharing images and files with others on your team rather tricky.

Social Media Management

HubSpot has a robust social media manager. You can schedule posts and monitor engagement. If you use spreadsheets to create a social media post calendar, HubSpot provides the ability to upload the sheets to its platform easily.

ActiveCampaign does not have any social media management features.

Campaign Management

Running campaigns in HubSpot is one of its strong points. The reason is that they have every tool you need under one roof.

So, you can link everything in your campaign within this single platform. You can segment your efforts based on how each campaign performs.

Performance

Ben Marcoux, a Roofing Lead Generation Expert, reports that ActiveCampaign works seamlessly with all the other tools he uses.

He also shares that if there is no direct integration available, he can create one using Zapier. Ben says he has never run into any technical issue preventing him from doing what he needs.

Carah Counts, Digital Marketing Strategist at CareATC, Inc. finds HubSpot a little slow at times. She attributes this to all the new features they have added to their platform.

However, she also states that most of the time, the platform is very fast. Carah also points out that because the majority of API integrations work in the background, she has never had any trouble with lag.

Implementation

No matter what tool you choose, there will be a learning curve. Setting up email marketing in ActiveCampaign is relatively simple and yields effective results.

Because HubSpot is such a multi-faceted feature-rich platform, the learning curve is rather long. Many suggest devoting time to learn the platform to make it easier to use. They do, however, have an excellent support team via email, live chat, and phone.

Marketing Automation Cost Comparison

HubSpot is more expensive than ActiveCampaign in general. Also, if you are looking for monthly prices, you won’t find them with HubSpot, but it is an option with ActiveCampaign.

If you are looking for the same functionality for ActiveCampaign that HubSpot offers, you will need to pay for a landing page builder and a blogging platform.

ActiveCampaign’s pricing plans are easier to understand because they have fewer options. HubSpot’s pricing can be a little more complicated.

For both platforms, the cost depends upon the size of your contact list. The more contacts you have, the higher the price.

Here is a summary of ActiveCampaign’s pricing structure. Click on the image below to learn more about how the prices for each option go up as you increase the number of contacts.

Below is a summary of HubSpot’s platform and pricing options. Click on the image to switch between platforms and number of contacts.

Which is Best for You?

There is no one or right answer. It all depends on your needs and what you are looking to do. Based on the features discussed above, you might prefer ActiveCampaign if:

• Your focus is on email marketing
• Being able to segment your lists is something you need
• Cost is a factor, and you need a CRM with marketing tools for your team
• You need advanced marketing automation on a tight budget

HubSpot might be a better option for you if:

• You don’t have strict budgetary restrictions
• Tying inbound marketing into your CRM is important to you
• A CRM is all you need because it is free with HubSpot
• Your conversions are high value, and you spend a lot of time working with individual contacts

Both ActiveCampaign and HubSpot offer powerful marketing automation and CRM features. Both are established companies with good reputations.

They have a lot of similar features, so neither one is the right choice and the other the wrong choice. The answer is still it depends.

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SiteGround is one of the most popular web hosting services available on the market today. It’s a safe and reliable way to host your website in 2019.

More than 2 million active domains are hosted with SiteGround.

One of the reasons why this service is so popular is because they offer hosting options and plans suitable for a wide range of websites and businesses.

Small personal websites, business websites, and large ecommerce sites alike can all use SiteGround.

For those of you who are looking to find a hosting provider for your new website, SiteGround is definitely a top option for you to consider.

It’s also a great choice for anyone who wants to switch hosting providers for their existing website since SiteGround has plans with a free site transfer. But we’ll talk about this in greater detail as we continue.

I’ll give you a better understanding of the plans, types of hosting, and top benefits offered by SiteGround. You can use this guide to make an informed decision to determine if SiteGround is the best web hosting plan for your needs.

Benefits of Using SiteGround Web Hosting

There is plenty of upside to using SiteGround as a web hosting service. I just want to quickly highlight and explain why this platform stands out from its competitors.

High uptimes

When it comes to measuring how good a web host is, uptime is the ultimate metric. By definition, this is the amount of time that a server stays up and running.

A recent study shows that SiteGround has exceptionally high uptimes, on average, over a twelve-month stretch.

In 2018, SiteGround ranked fourth compared to other web hosts judging by average uptime. As you can see, they were just barely beat out for the third place spot by a one-thousandth percentage point.

Overall, the average uptime for the 32 shared web hosting services in the study was 99.59%. SiteGround was significantly higher than the average and near the top of the list.

High uptimes ensure that your site will nearly always be up and running around the clock.

Fast load times

Just because your site is up, it doesn’t always mean that it will be fast. But take a look at the response time for this SiteGround test website that was set up by Hosting Facts.

We already talked about the great uptime, but now you can refer to the response time column.

The average response time for the first six months of 2019 was 662 ms. That’s phenomenal. In addition to using a good web host, you should also know the other top principles that boost website loading times.

Great customer support

Hopefully, you don’t have any issues with SiteGround. But in the event that you run into a problem, have a question, or need some assistance, it’s nice to know that they provide excellent customer support.

You can access phone support as well as live chat 24/7. As I mentioned earlier, you’ll have priority support if you have a GoGeek plan. This means that you’ll be connected with the most experienced SiteGround technicians whenever you need help.

Free features

Web hosting services will always try to hit you with add-ons at an upcharge. But SiteGround throws in some great features at no extra charge.

Your membership comes with one free site migration. This can be done with their migrator plugin, which we talked about earlier. If you have the GrowBig or GoGeek plan, a SiteGround professional will do the migration for you.

SiteGround plans also come with a free CDN and free SSL certificate.

Cloudflare CDN keeps images, videos, and other large files off of your server. As a result, your server is always fast. Since SiteGround users servers all over the globe, the CDN makes sure that files are stored closer to website visitors for fast delivery.

The SSL certificate is required for all websites. It protects private information being transmitted between devices and websites. SiteGround throwing this in for free is a nice touch since you’d need to get one regardless.

Flexible

Nearly any website can be hosted on SiteGround.

It’s a great web hosting service for beginners and experienced users alike. You don’t need to be too tech-savvy to understand how the platform works and get your site hosted. But on the other hand, if you like to be more hands-on with the server and take advantage of certain features, SiteGround has plans with you in mind.

There are also enough options on SiteGround to accommodate different web hosting needs, such as shared hosting, dedicated server hosting, and cloud hosting.

They have plans suitable for a wide range of average site traffic as well. So as your website scales, you can always upgrade to a plan that will meet your needs.

Money back guarantee

SiteGround offers a 30-day money back guarantee for their shared hosting plans. This shows that they stand behind the services that are offered.

Dedicated servers and cloud hosting plans have a 14-day money back guarantee, which is still enough time to tell if you’re happy with your service.

SiteGround will also refund you if they fail to meet a 99.9% uptime rate. This is clearly written in their terms of service.

This relates back to what we talked about earlier, in terms of their high uptime rates. There’s a reason why it’s so high—SiteGround has a promise to stand behind.

Other considerations

There’s no such thing as a perfect web hosting service. While SiteGround is great, there are a few downsides that you should be made aware of before you proceed.

Setup fee

SiteGround charges a one-time setup fee for $14.95 with all of their plans. It’s not a deal breaker by any stretch, but it means you can’t just sign up for their lowest plan and be out the door for $3.95.

Renewal rates

At first glance, SiteGround’s pricing is very attractive. But those are only promotional rates.

When you renew, your rates will jump as follows:

• $3.95 to $11.95 per month
• $5.95 to $19.95 per month
• $11.95 to $34.95 per month

The cost essentially triples across the board. So I’d recommend locking in the longest contract possible when you first sign up, which is 36 months. This will guarantee you a low rate for a while before you’re forced to renew.

Limited budget plan

For those of looking for the best cheap web hosting service, SiteGround’s StartUp plan for $3.95 per month is definitely attention-grabbing.

It’s a great choice for those of you with smaller websites, but it’s fairly limited for anyone who plans on getting more than 10,000 visitors per month. You may have to upgrade faster than you anticipated if you start with their lowest priced web hosting plan.

Compare SiteGround Web Hosting Plans

Like most web hosting services, SiteGround offers different plans for websites with varying needs. In this case, there are three tiers for most of their hosting types.

With the exception of cloud hosting and dedicated server hosting, the prices of these three plans will remain the same across the board for shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and Woocommerce hosting. We’ll dive deeper into those plans later in this guide.

For now, I’ll focus on the pricing and features of the three most popular plan options offered by SiteGround.

StartUp

As the name implies, the SiteGround StartUp plan is ideal for new websites. With rates starting at $3.95 per month, this plan is suitable for websites with less than 10,000 monthly visits.

You can only host one website with the StartUp plan, and it comes with 10 GB of web space. Other top features include:

• Free site builder
• Free SSL and HTTPS
• Free email accounts
• Free CloudFlare CDN

It’s a basic plan, but definitely appropriate for new websites that are starting from scratch. For those of you who want more features and better performance, you’ll need to upgrade. You’ll also outgrow the StartUp plan as your traffic increases (which is a good thing).

GrowBig

The GrowBig plan starts at $5.95 per month. This is ideal for medium-sized websites averaging up to 25,000 monthly visits. GrowBig has 20 GB of web space and can host an unlimited number of sites.

Unlike the StartUp plan, GrowBig has enhanced caching ability. The SiteGround Supercacher has three levels.

• Level 1 — Static content caching
• Level 2 — Dynamic data caching
• Level 3 — Database queries caching

StartUp only caches at the first level, but GrowBig caches on all three levels.

If you sign up for the middle-tier plan offered by SiteGround, you’ll also get free on-demand backups, a free site transfer, as well as a staging feature for WordPress and Joomla sites. I’d say that the GrowBig plan will be suitable for most of you who are reading this guide.

GoGeek

GoGeek can accommodate up to 100,000 monthly visits and has 30 GB of web space. Obviously, this plan is made for bigger websites with high volumes of traffic.

Rates for GoGeek start at $11.95 per month, but the plan comes with all of the bells and whistles. In addition to everything that’s available in the GrowBig plan, GoGeek offers:

• Advanced priority support (expedited customer service to the most experienced agents)
• PCI compliant servers (necessary for those of you who process payments online)
• Git pre-installed (for creating repositories on your site)

The name for this plan was inspired by technology geeks. So it’s made for those of you who want more control of your site. If you don’t understand some of the tech lingo that’s being mentioned in the GoGeek plan, it’s probably not for you. The only other reason why you’d need to upgrade to GoGeek is if you’re getting tons of monthly site traffic.

WordPress hosting

SiteGround offers hosting options specifically designed for WordPress users. This will save you time since you won’t need to manually download, install, and configure WordPress.

With SiteGround, you can take advantage of their automated process that’s as simple as clicking a button. This plan also makes it easier for you to customize your WordPress site by choosing a theme, picking your site functionalities, and installing marketing tools.

The WordPress Starter Kit from SiteGround is a great added feature for new WordPress sites. You don’t need any technical knowledge or experience to set this up.

If you have an existing WordPress site, SiteGround offers a free WordPress transfer. The SiteGround Migrator plugin takes care of everything for you. This is a secure way to transfer your site.

Alternatively, if you have a GrowBig or GoGeek plan, you can get your WordPress site migrated by one of the experts at SiteGround. This is a free service for one website before rates start at $30 per site.

WooCommerce hosting

SiteGround also has hosting options for ecommerce shops using WooCommerce.

The quick install and integration with WooCommerce is an easy way for you to create a professional theme for your online store. You can get the site up and running in minutes.

Just migrate your WooCommerce site using the migrator plugin. Just like WordPress hosting, WooCommerce migrations done by a SiteGround expert is free for one website if you’re on the GrowBig or GoGeek plan. Then you’ll have to pay $30 per each additional site.

If you have WooCommerce, you’re going to need to the GoGeek plan anyways, since that comes standard with PCI compliant servers.

Cloud hosting

Cloud hosting is a new way to host websites. The process uses multiple remote servers and is a great option for those of you who have websites that have outgrown the shared hosting plans.

With cloud hosting, SiteGround gives you guaranteed resources to meet your needs. Your own RAM and CPU won’t be shared with any other websites.

It’s also easy for you to scale your website with this type of web hosting.

You can upgrade your RAM, CPU, and disk space on-demand at any time. You don’t need to get approval to do this, and it happens without any website downtime.

Rather than always doing this manually, you can set up automatic scaling with SiteGround. It will adjust your CPU and RAM to meet the needs of unexpected traffic surges, but you still have control of all the parameters.

There are four plans for SiteGround Cloud hosting. As you can see from the image above, the plans range from $80 to $240 per month. So there’s definitely plenty of options to choose from.

I’d say that the business plan will likely be a suitable choice for most of you who are using a cloud hosting service for the first time.

Dedicated servers

For those of you who don’t want to use cloud hosting or shared hosting, SiteGround offers dedicated server options as well.

This is perfect if you don’t want any restrictions in terms of the software you use on your website. You’ll also be able to make changes directly to your server if you go with this route.

All servers are managed by the experts at SiteGround. They also offer software designed to boost the performance of your server and provide added functionality.

You can also choose the location of your data center.

• United States
• Europe
• Asia-Pacific

There are three dedicated server plans offered by SiteGround:

• Entry Server
• Power Server
• Super Power Server

These plans start at $269 per month, $349 per month, and $729 per month, respectively.

Conclusion

I’ll get straight to the point—I would definitely recommend SiteGround for web hosting.

This platform offers a wide range of hosting types and plans to accommodate the needs of nearly any website, large or small. SiteGround stacks up well compared to its competitors in terms of features and performance.

Hawk Host was founded in 2004 under the original name Devoted Host. The name was changed later due to the departure of one of the founders.

It started using the name Hawk Host in 2008 and it became a Canadian corporation with the remaining founder as its CEO.

Hawk Host takes pride in providing hosting with extensive knowledge in software development and web hosting.

They provide their hosting services to ensure that they overcome commonplace challenges. They work smarter as opposed to working hard.

For more than a decade now, Hawk Host has been offering a variety of services. Hawk Host is a one-stop-shop for all web hosting services.

Some of the common services that they offer include the following:

• Domains
• Shared web hosting
• Reseller hosting
• SSL certificates
• Semi-dedicated hosting
• Cloud web hosting
• VPS hosting
• Cloud servers

Features

Hawk Host comes with several features that makes it stand apart from the crowd.

The following are some of the salient features:

#1. Loading Speeds

No matter how much you’re spending on hosting, if your host uses outdated hardware and software and puts too many limitations on your server, or hosts too many users on a single shared server, your website will suffer.

It’ll mostly suffer on loading speeds, which is very essential for your business.

If your website doesn’t load quickly, the visitor will return back and find somewhere else to go. Simple as that.

Fortunately, Hawk Host provides good loading speeds.

#2. Uptime

Hawk Host guarantees its customers a 99% uptime for all their shared and reseller hosting plans.

Their uptime guarantee is provided in their SLA handout that is issued to their customers. The SLA states that the customers will be compensated for any downtime that they experience in a given billing month.

The amount that you pay as a customer is slated at 10% of the amount payable per month and it increases to 100% if the uptime falls below 99%. As a customer, you can claim the compensatory money any time by opening their SLA ticket.

Hawk Host has six different servers in different parts of the world. Four of their servers are located in different parts of the US, one server is found in Amsterdam and the final one is located in Singapore.

Each of their servers utilizes 1 tier and 2 transit providers. The servers also have a Juniper and Cisco network hardware. Each server has a diesel generator and a UPS system for backup.

These backups ensure that the power supply to the server is not interrupted under any circumstances.

Although Hawk Host does not publish their uptime on their site, their customers can check the maintenance data on all their data centers as well as their technical specifications.

Most importantly, Hawk Host’s users can be able to perform a speed test on any data center they want to see which one is faster for them to use.

Apart from that, customers can also be able to test the data center download speed by using different file sizes.

#3. Unlimited Email Accounts

Hawk Host comes with email functionality at no extra charge. It allows you to create an unlimited number of email accounts, receive an unlimited number of emails and set up an unlimited number of forwarding rules.

Most importantly, you can check your email from any interface using their web-based interface.

They also have anti-spam protection hence it ensures that your inbox is clean all the time.

#4. Site Builder

Hawk Host provides Weebly site builder in all their plans.

This is a reputable easy to use site builder which anyone can use to create a website.

This site builder comes with recent e-commerce supported software. Therefore, you can use Weebly site builder to create a secure e-commerce store without breaking a sweat.

#5. Customer Support

Hawk Host has servers that have the ability to automatically repair themselves in case of an issue.

However, despite the fact that their servers have the ability to automatically repair themselves, they have active customer support. They provide support through emails, phone calls, and ticketing.

Besides the above means of support, Hawk Host also has a knowledgebase, blog, news, alerts, and articles. A customer can also get help by interacting with other users through their help forums.

Additionally, Hawk Host has a Facebook page and an active Google+ through which a customer can get help. However, any form of assistance on these forums is steered back to the help desk.

Hawk Host also has two Twitter accounts. One account is used by Hawk Host to tweet their live server updates and the other account is dedicated to the customer- Hawk Host interaction.

The Hawk Host technical team handles all kinds of technology-related issues via the ticketing system. They also have a good control panel which can be used to deal with most site management.

They have provided their contact info on their site for contact in case of any help needed. Thus, the Hawk Host customer support is very reliable in the web hosting industry.

#6. WordPress Hosting

Hawk Host offers WordPress hosting services.

They provide WordPress optimized services that make it easy to host WordPress.

You can install WordPress within a few minutes with a 1-click install process.

#7. Free Migration

Hawk Host offers free expert support and migration from another company to its site.

Their team of experts offers expert transfer of WordPress accounts. Their servers are optimized in such a way that they tune WordPress so that they can give you a better experience using it.

All of the Hawk Host hosting plans have free transfer support.

So, if you have a site on any other company and you would like to start using the Hawk Host services, switching hosts is not an issue because their team of experts will do everything for you at no extra cost.

#8. Cloudflare Integration

Each Hawk Host plan is optimized and is ready to use on the Cloudflare content delivery network.

This Cloudflare integration ensures that as a customer you do not experience any problem with configuring. This means that you only need to activate your CDN from the convenience of Hawk Host’s cPanel.

After configuring your CDN, you will start experiencing a boost in speed on your website.

#9. One-Click Installations

Hawk Host offers support for various software for content management systems.

Some of the common software includes Magento, Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal.

In addition to that, you will receive a wide variety of system-specific tools. This comes with the convenience of a 1-click installation.

#10. Control Panel

Hawk Host provides cPanel for website management purposes.

They also have a multi-lingual cPanel from which customers can select a language of their choice for their cPanel. Their control panel is user-friendly and whether new or experienced customers can use it without breaking a sweat.

The reseller plan has a cPanel with a companion tool – WHM.

The VPS users are also given a customized control panel, however, they charge extra for a better control panel for these category users. The VPS customized cPanel is well designed to meet all the VPS users’ needs.

#11. Server Locations

Hawk Host has 6 server centers in different locations. Their server centers are found in the following locations:

• (i) US – 4 servers
• (ii) Singapore – one server
• (iii) Amsterdam – one server

What’s good about Hawk Host is that they allow you to select a server of your choice to host your server. For instance, if your business is located in Los Angles, you can select a server that is near to you. The closer the server is to you, the better the speed.

#12. Money-Back Guarantee

Hawk Host’s reseller, semi-dedicated and shared hosting plans come with a 30 – day money-back guarantee. However, if the User breaches the terms and conditions of the plan signed up, then the guarantee becomes null and void.

Full information about the money-back guarantee is available on their terms and conditions page.

#13. Hawk Host Extras

Hawk Host offers the following extras: Softaculous and Fantastico 1-click installers. They also come with a 7-day back up in their cost. They also offer Cube Cart, Zen Cart, and OS Commerce software for all those clients who wish to do affiliate marketing through their website.

Most importantly, Hawk Host’s hosting is compatible with Zend, PHP, Pearl, Pear, Ruby on Rails, Python and so much more.

In addition to that, you will also get the following salient features in any of their shared hosting plans.

• Free SSL certificate
• A minimum of 10000 MBs to unlimited space
• Unlimited databases
• Lightspeed web server
• Unlimited domains
• A free Memcached server
• SSD storage for speed
• Unlimited bandwidth

Hosting Plans and Prices

Hawk Host has two major Shared hosting plans i.e.

Primary plan – it is available at $2.99 per month. It comes with free migration, 10,000 MB SSD disk storage space, unlimited domains, unlimited bandwidth, free unlimited SSL certificate, unlimited databases, and a free Memcached server.

Professional plan – it costs $7.99 in a month. It comes with unlimited disk space, free unlimited SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, free migration, unlimited disk space, and free Memcached server.

Each plan has its own price with different payment options such as monthly, 3 months, six months and one-year payment plan.

Most of the features that are necessary for web hosting are provided by Hawk Host. Their features start with low-level plans which have some limitations. But, their features are ideal for newbies such as bloggers.

The following are the hosting packages available:

Shared hosting – under the basic plan, this package comes with 3000 MB disk space, 45 GB monthly bandwidth, 360 GB monthly bandwidth for the super package. The entire hosting plan under the shared hosting plan comes with unlimited domains, unlimited emails, MySQL database. In addition to that, all the packages can be ordered either with the LiteSpeed or CloudLinux Apache.

Reseller hosting – Hawk Host’s reseller packages are the same as the shared hosting plans in structure. The reseller packages are available for those customers who want to manage many accounts. They come with four different options, beginning with 15 GB disk storage space, 300 GB/ month bandwidth and up to 50 cPanel accounts.

In addition to that, Hawk Host will give you the necessary tools for managing many websites.

Semi-dedicated servers – for customers that want more hosting without the cost of a full dedicated server, Hawk Host has four different semi-dedicated servers. This package is in between the VPS and dedicated hosting. In essence, the semi-dedicated server comes with fewer sites that they share. It is more expensive as compared to the VPS but it has better performance. The plans come with 1200 GB monthly bandwidth, 50000 GB monthly disk storage space while other plans come with 20000 GB disk space and 350 GB monthly bandwidth.

VPS hosting – Hawk Host has four different types of VPS hosting packages. The basic VPS plan comes with a 10 GB disk space and 250 GB monthly bandwidth. Under this plan, they guarantee their customers a 384 MB RAM. All the customers on the VPS plan share a common CPU on the host server. They also have a super VPS plan which comes with 40 GB disk space, 2048 MB RAM, 550 GB bandwidth among other features.

There are 3 major plans under the VPS hosting plan. These packages are:

a) Basic – its monthly charge is $18. It comes with 1024 MB memory space, SSD powered disk storage, 1500 GB bandwidth and 30 GB space.

b) Advanced – it starts at $36 per month. It comes with an equal share on the CPU, 2000 GB bandwidth, it is SSD powered, 40 GB space and 2048 MB memory.

c) Super – it charge per month starts at $58.50 and it comes with an equal share of CPU space. It also has 3000 GB bandwidth, 4096 MB memory, 50 GB space and it is SSD powered.

Besides these plans, Hawk Host also has an affiliate program that its customers can use to generate an income.

Pros of Hawk Host

The following are the merits of Hawk Host web hosting:

Customer support – their customer care is available 24/7/365 with the desk help and other help forums. Their help forums include emails, calls, tickets. They respond to concerns within a short time and the customer care professionals can respond to your queries promptly. If you contact them via email, the most direct you to use their help forums or help desk.

Uptime – Hawk Host has a reputation for keeping websites on their servers 100% of the time. Their uptime is guaranteed at 99%. They have automatic fixes to minor problems as compared to their competitors who use manpower to fix problems. Therefore, you can be sure of limited downtime.

SSD servers – SSD servers are way faster as compared to their HDD counterparts. These servers ensure that their server is faster and the page load time is shorter.

User-friendly cPanel – the Hawk Host has a user-friendly interface that is very easy to navigate through. You can also use their cPanel to set up your website easily. They also have different software options that are compatible with software such as Joomla and WordPress.

Fast service – Hawk Host has a decent performance which ensures all its users a good hosting experience. It boasts of a good speed just as other hosting companies.

Many server centers – Hawk Host has 6 server centers in different parts of the world. They have 4 servers in various locations within the US, one server in Singapore and one server in Amsterdam.

Multilingual cPanel – their control panel comes with a variety of languages hence giving a customer a chance to select a language of their preference.

Several hosting options – Hawk Host has good options for mid-level users such as semi-dedicated servers

Cons of Hawk Host

The following are some of Hawk Host’s drawbacks:

They share your personal information easily – according to reports by most of Hawk Host’s users, they sell a customer’s information. Whenever they sell your information, you start to receive unsolicited calls.

No live chat – as much as their customer support is active, helpful and responsive, they lack the live chat. Live chatting is usually the quickest and easiest method of reaching customer care without necessarily waiting for an answer.

Pricing – if you are paying on a monthly basis, their prices are a bit higher. Besides that, they ask for an upfront payment of large sums before signing up for a given package. As compared to other hosting companies that have lower prices per package per month, Hawk Host’s high-end prices are a deal-breaker. Their prices are only faring on a yearly subscription plan. For all the VPS hosting plans, the cPanel is available at an extra fee.

Hawk Host does not have a fully dedicated server hosting plan.

Hawk Host Review Conclusion

That concludes our review of Hawk Host. Hawk Host can be compared relatively with other web hosting companies that have the same price range.

Their plans and payment options have a clear progression, they are ideal for starters who want to grow their online business till they get to the highest.

All of their semi-dedicated shared and reseller hosting plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee (unless the term and conditions are violated by the user).

Their price ranges allow many people to sign up for a plan which they consider ideal for their online business needs.

Although they do not have live chat options which might be a deal-breaker, still Hawk Host is a solid web hosting choice.

In this GeneratePress review I will tell you the story of how after using multiple themes in my pursuit for the fastest theme with great design potential for photographers and creatives I’ve finally found the one.

Created by Tom Usborne, GeneratePress claims to be the fastest super light weight theme with clean code. Out of the box it’s 30kb, and even with all my extra plugins and images, my current GeneratePress website is 430kb, whereas this current website is over 1mb which is average for wordpress websites.

Scheme Theme – MyThemeShop

I was so very close to getting the Schema theme from MyThemeShop. This theme has been designed with SEO and speed in mind. This can be the perfect theme for many affiliate bloggers.

It is a simplistic blog design with speeds to match Divi and its competitors. I was even offered a significant discount to get me over the line. I was very tempted.

The Schema theme is great for speed, but I could not gel with the design, it’s not bad, it’s more of a personal choice. Some of the layouts just didn’t match what I wanted with the design structure I had in mind.

Photography and Creative Design

Another reason that stopped me from going with the Schema theme is that it is primarily a blog theme, it is not designed to showcase photography or art. 

Even as a photography blog I feel the fit would not be right having tinkered with the free version. I think there needs to be more integration with a gallery section or an Instagram feed.

For a different niche the Schema theme could be perfect and may well revisit it for future projects.

This then led me to check out OceanWP.

OceanWP Theme

An interesting turn in my story is that I was deciding between Schema theme and OceanWP, specifically the bakery pro demo. 

As you can see it has a great looking transparent menu navigation that blends with the header. The header is a slick slider header design which would be great for featured articles.

OceanWP also had as close to the ideal layout of a blog article I wanted to achieve. I wanted to get as close to the same article format as big websites like Wirecutter.com or TheVerge.com. Which is article meta at the top. Below that, the title and subtitle, and then more meta, like author, published date and social sharing tools.

OceanWP offered this, but again not exactly the way I wanted it. But being closer to what I wanted plus having a better shop page design, I decided on OceanWP.

So I actually ended up purchasing OceanWP and fully customised my next website. All it needed was content.

Photography and Creative Theme Design

What’s great about OceanWP’s demo sites is that there can be a gallery section on the front page, and Instagram can be integrated into the sidebar. 

It can look like a great blog for a photographer or creative person. The design is up there with Squarespace, but with better speeds.

Other notable mentions

I did consider ThemeX from Themeforest, but thought the layout while interesting, was a bit clunky looking and again, being from Themeforest did not offer a multi-site licence.

Why I Chose GeneratePress

The next part in my GeneratePress review story is that I started designing a third website (not for myself) and instead of going with OceanWP again, I thought about checking out GeneratePress, and if I didn’t like it I would just ask for a refund.

I was so impressed, that with only a month used on my OceanWP licence on my second website, I dropped it for GeneratePress and have not looked back since.

Straight away I checked GTmetrix and Pingdom to see the speeds and even without a caching plugin the website is achieving sub 2 second page loads. Page viewers on average will leave a website that loads anything over 3 seconds. Google list page speed as one of their three ranking factors. Speed is important. I have only so far used the SG Optimizer.

For comparison, this website achieves around 3 second load speeds on a good day and that’s with WP Rocket, which is the best caching plugin on the market. But that’s a premium plugin. I’m really curious what the speeds would be for my new website with WP Rocket.

Above is OceanWP on my second site using a free caching plugin and after tinkering the theme to my design aesthetic. If you test the demo site url for Bakery it’s super fast, under 2 seconds, unlike my OceanWP website which you can see loaded in nearly 7 seconds.

It is possible to run my website at that OceanWP’s demo page speeds. But I am certain I would need WP Rocket, and image optimizing plugin and an upgrade to my hosting plan; maybe a dedicated server, which the demo site must be running.

OceanWP have to use the best hosting and plugins to showcase the speed. Because people like me will test their demo site to see if the speeds are possible.

The difference is GeneratePress runs at OceanWP’s speeds and all its premium upgrades without the need for any of them! It runs quick right out of the box. Once I add WP Rocket it’ll probably be under 1 second.

What I don’t like about GeneratePress

I am not sponsored and want this to be an unbiased GeneratePress review but there is actually little to not like. You get a super light theme with consistent speeds and you can tinker it to your liking.

The latter is what will turn off some. You can use GeneratePress out of the box, as there are a few demo sites to choose from and the default site is very simplistic.

However to get it to how I wanted, I had to download the right plugins, change settings in the customer and tinker with a bit of code.

This understandably is not what some people are after. If you want a wordpress website with a demo design you can use straight away you may have to check out OceanWP.  I wouldn’t go with Squarespace.

I should stress, I am not a website developer. I have never had an html coding training. I simply use my common sense and design skills and research what I need. Using the great support network GeneratePress has and the extensive WordPress support system, any queries I had were only a Google search away.

Free Version and GP Premium

Apart from the speed, there are other key features to consider when choosing GeneratePress.

The first is there are two versions. The free version is a standard blog style format with sidebar. It has few bells and whistles, so there is little you can other than upload content.

GP Premium Plugin

The premium version of theme comes in the form of a plugin you install. Unlike OceanWP, there is only the one plugin to install to unlock all of the theme’s attributes. 

With OceanWP there are about 15 or so to get certain demos including all their functions working. For example, there is a plugin for the bakery demo slider, a plugin for GDPR, sidebar, social sharing, sticky header etc.

To be fair, GeneratePress would require a separate plugin for GDPR and a slider if I wanted that. Once I have installed all the necessary plugins like Wordfence, RankMath or Updraft Plus Backup, there are over 30 plugins to run OceanWP. That’s quite bloated and would be more susceptible to issues.

So far my GeneratePress site has less than half the amount of plugins at 14 and counting.

So Why am I not using GeneratePress for this Site?

GeneratePress is a fantastic theme, the potential to design it to your liking is endless. The speed as I have said is the fastest I have seen, and I have tried most of the best themes for speed.

Newspaper X is no slouch, and so long as my website loads under 3 seconds I will not be in any rush to convert.

The Newspaper X theme is also a one time licence fee payment, and if it was a yearly subscription it would make no sense sticking with it when I have the GeneratePress licence as well. 

So if I had my GeneratePress licence before I made this website, I would almost certainly not have used this theme.

When my support for this theme ending this year, if I have any issues I cannot resolve, I will have to renew my subscription. At that point I will not do so. I have not had the best support from Newspaper X’s customer support so there is no incentive for me.

This is, however, a mature site with a lot of articles, so swapping over will not be as easy, but the outcome will be a super fast loading website. Combined with WP Rocket should result in even faster loading times.

GeneratePress Review Thoughts

I hope this GeneratePress review has been informative in your decision making process. In making this GeneratePress review I have attempted to cover all the bases, but one thing I have yet to cover is long term usage. But I will make sure to update this article with my long term findings.